Foolish Mortals
by Karalora
Summary: A special remote assignment has the Holy Student Council ghosthunting in the last place they ever expected! But can they actually get the job done, or will the locale itself prove too...distracting?
1. Chapter 1: Remote Assignment

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction_ and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 1: Remote Assignment

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The sun was close to setting, and the Holy Student Council of Saitou High School was still engaged in a battle that had begun hours before, not long after lunchtime.

Haruto Houjo, the eldest member and president of the small group, plugged away at the challenge with steady determination. He hadn't volunteered for his position with the Council, in fact he found it demeaning and nearly pointless and would have dearly loved to quit, but he believed in hard work and duty and so he would perform to the best of what he perceived as his limited ability.

Saucy Mutsuki Asahina took a very different approach to the grueling task at hand, picking and choosing her actions according what she was best at and enjoyed most. Her method was perhaps less scrupulous than Haruto's, but in a way it was more efficient, as she held her energy in reserve for those things that were likely to have the most effect.

Then there was Kazumi Ryuudo, the youngest member and something of a wild card. He was overall the most enthusiastic of the three, but his impulsiveness and lack of experience made his performance rather sporadic. Any one effort on his part could meet with remarkable success…or it could actually make the situation worse.

Three such vastly different personalities might seem to be utterly incompatible, but somehow the Holy Student Council managed to make decent progress in their struggle. It was as if all their various handicaps aligned in such a way as to cancel out, just often enough that they made headway…but then it happened.

Mutsuki reeled backwards with a stricken expression. "I'm hit!" she groaned, toppling to the floor.

"Asahina-sempai!" Kazumi wailed, running to her side and kneeling to support her upper body in his arms. "Hang on!" he pleaded.

Haruto could only stare in dismay. How had this happened? It had started as such a straightforward assignment.

"Kazumi…" Mutsuki moaned. "I'm not going to make it."

"Sempai, don't say things like that!"

"There's no point in denying it," she rasped. "Kazumi-kun, you have to be strong. For Kaichou. You're the only support he has left." She paused, wrinkling her nose. "The only mortal support, anyway," she corrected herself. "So please…" She trailed off, shuddering, and then fell limp in Kazumi's arms.

"_SEMPAAAAIIIIII!_" Kazumi bawled in anguish.

Haruto finally broke his stunned silence. "Knock it off, you two. We still have a lot of cleaning to get done."

Giggling, the two younger Council members separated and went back to their mops and sponges.

Cleaning up the auditorium after some rowdy spirits had used it as the site for a late-day party (spirits, being mostly nocturnal, considered the wildest parties to be those that were held from the late morning into the wee hours of the afternoon) was a battle, all right. But, Haruto fumed, it would be a considerably easier battle if his so-called teammates would just work at it instead of screwing around an average of once every twenty minutes. Mutsuki's overblown death scene was just the latest and most egregious in a long line of goof-off sessions.

"Honestly," he muttered bitterly. "We'd be _done_ by now if you two would just apply yourselves…" He hastily stopped himself: he sounded like a guidance counselor.

"C'mon, Kaichou!" Kazumi cajoled him sunnily. "It's more fun this way!"

"But it takes three times as long when you keep stopping to play around!"

"Does it really matter how long it takes as long as we get it done? Which would you rather do—something fun for a long time or something awful for a short time?" the Buddhist monk-in-training pointed out.

Well, maybe Kazumi had a point. But Haruto mustered every iota of his cherished Christian work ethic and debated the point. "It's not about what we'd _rather_ do—it's about what we've been _assigned_ to do! And we have not been assigned to have fun with this job! We certainly haven't been assigned to stop doing it every twenty minutes in order to fake a death scene!"

"The problem with you," Mutsuki said incisively, "is that you think misery is a virtue. If you're not careful, you'll be the one doing the next death scene, and it won't be a fake. I'm not the one with my face planted in the ammonia fumes, after all."

Okay, she definitely had a point. It wouldn't do anyone a bit of good if Haruto made himself sick from inhalation of chemical vapors. He left off scrubbing the floor on hands and knees in favor of tasks that offered a bit more fresh air. The degree to which his head cleared made him realize just how muddled it had been. Maybe his junior colleagues were not demonstrating the pinnacle of ethics and restraint by treating the assignment so lightly, but they weren't doing any harm, either. As to Mutuski in particular, it was better to have her occasionally playing around than constantly complaining, as she had done for a solid hour at the beginning of the assignment, her vanity chafing at the prospect of menial chores.

And on a deeper level, Haruto envied them, envied how laid-back they were, wished he could ignore his own nagging conscience and join the games.

Eventually, they finished cleaning the auditorium. An onlooker would never know that it had, only hours earlier, been the setting for the revelry of ghosts. For that matter, he or she would never know that it was regularly filled with high school students. The Holy Student Council had been thorough. Haruto sighed with the pleasure of a job well done, sitting on an emptied, overturned bucket.

His calm state didn't last long, because he suddenly had the extraordinary impression that something was ballooning out of his right ear canal—something that was, in fact, larger than his whole head.

"WAAAAHHHHHHHH!" he described the sensation, flailing his arms like an epileptic mosquito, automatically leaning to the left as though to escape it …and falling off the bucket in the process.

It was only the Chairman, a dwarf-sized man who had not let his own death interrupt his career as principal of the school. Naturally because of his status, he was the chief of the various school spirits as well as of the Student Council. He also had a number of disturbing pastimes, such as collecting anything and everything related to the occult (a hobby which swelled the ranks of the campus's supernatural population), photographing the Student Council in action, and making appearances by means of emerging from one of Haruto's bodily orifices. This never failed to unnerve Haruto, which was why it never failed to amuse the Chairman.

The squat, mustached ghost floated around the auditorium, examining it (but not snapping any photos, since a nearly spotless room was not very interesting insofar as the camera was concerned). "Nice work, you three," he assessed. "It took you a lot longer than I would have expected, though. Haruto-kun, why didn't you just summon the school spirits to help you?"

Haruto's hand half-involuntarily moved to touch the seven round badges, each a different color, pinned to his uniform shirt in a hexagonal arrangement that signified the six points and the center of a protective star. The thought had actually crossed his mind a few times during the arduous task, but he had opted not to enlist the help of Saitou High's seven most loyal and powerful ghosts for several reasons, not the least of which he explained right away.

"Chairman, I thought you wanted us to do it. If this was a job for the school spirits, you would have offered to help, wouldn't you?" For the Chairman himself was one of the seven, linked to the central blue badge.

"SILLY BOY!" the Chairman boomed, momentarily swelling up to gigantic proportions—another of the Haruto-alarming activities he enjoyed. "You're right that I wasn't about to do the work myself…but I would have been happy to supervise the others while they helped out. You three could have gotten off a lot lighter than you did."

Haruto decided that if he didn't acknowledge the smoldering glares coming from the other two Council members, they weren't really angry with him. "Well, at any rate it's done," he said. "If there's nothing else you need for today, I'd like to get home now. It's after dark." Not that it was anything unusual for the Holy Student Council to have to patrol the halls at night, since, as mentioned, most spirits were nocturnal.

"Yes, go home and get some sleep," the Chairman agreed. "All three of you. I need you all here bright and early tomorrow."

"What for?" Kazumi asked.

"You've all done so well here today, I've decided to reward with a special remote assignment!" the Chairman replied, spreading his arms beneficently.

"Remote assignment?" Haruto repeated. "What does that mean?"

"And what kind of reward is that?" Mutsuki pouted. "More work?"

"Oh, I think you'll like it," the Chairman winked. "As to what it involves…as you know, I have connections throughout the spirit world. One of them is calling in a favor. Unlike me, she prefers not to have other ghosts and spirits residing in her territory. But one recently arrived and will not leave. It seems the newcomer is very confused and thinks it has found a good place to stay. I've offered my acquaintance your services in convincing it otherwise."

"That sounds straightforward enough," Haruto reasoned, painfully aware that the auditorium-cleaning assignment, too, had seemed straightforward at the outset. "What do we need to do?"

"Just make sure you're in front of the school no later than seven-thirty a.m. tomorrow. I've ordered a taxi for you due to leave at that time. Don't worry about the fare; it's been paid for in advance. The only things you'll need to bring are your usual tools and the contents of this." He produced a blank manila envelope from somewhere and handed it to Mutsuki, who blinked at it with curiosity.

"Should I open it?" she asked.

"Better not," Kazumi said, a slight quiver of anticipation in his voice belying his unusually sober demeanor. "If it's important, you don't want to risk losing any of it."

"Right," she agreed, sticking the envelope under her arm.

Haruto briefly wondered why she had been given the envelope, when he was the president, then decided that it was probably because she was standing the closest to the Chairman, and that he was being paranoid. After all, Mutsuki wasn't _irresponsible_, exactly, just…frivolous on occasion. A lot of occasions.

"That is all," the Chairman concluded. "Holy Student Council dismissed." He phased out of material reality.

"Wait!" Haruto said. "How will we know—" But the ghost was already gone. "—what to do when we get there?" Haruto finished lamely.

He could always try summoning the Chairman right back in order to get more information, but what would be the point? Ostensibly, Haruto was able to command the seven school spirits, but the principal had an intractable nature, plus his own position of authority made the chain of command rather ambiguous. Resigned to frustration, Haruto let his upper body droop as he stared at the spot where the Chairman had been.

"Don't fret, Kaichou," Mutsuki said helpfully. "We'll just ask the Chairman's friend. At any rate, I'm sure we're not being left to flounder."

"And if we are, well…we've managed to muddle through before, haven't we?" Kazumi joined in.

"Oh, goody," Haruto said, not at all as if he meant it.

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Haruto ran.

He found himself doing that on a lot of mornings recently. Being on the Holy Student Council was so stressful and exhausting that, more and more frequently, he slept right through his alarm. And this was assuming that the alarm went off at all, that no wandering spirit had followed him home from school the day before and played havoc with the household electronics. And _that_ was assuming that the alarm clock was still there to begin with, that it hadn't fallen through a stray ghost vortex into another dimension.

Okay, so that last hadn't technically happened. Yet. Haruto was sure that it was just a matter of time.

"Why _today_?" he demanded of the Universe in general as he sprinted in the direction of the school. "When not only can't I afford to be late, but 'late' comes earlier than normal?"

He rounded the final corner and glanced at his watch without slackening his pace. **7:27**, blinked the LCD display. He would just make it. Looking ahead again, he caught sight of the taxi, idling at the curb by the front gate like a contented cat. No one else was there; Mutsuki and Kazumi apparently hadn't arrived yet. No—there they were, coming around the far corner of the sidewalk that surrounded the campus. They seemed maddeningly unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world, as opposed to a scant few minutes.

Haruto reached the cab and tapped on the driver's window. The driver, a pale man with eyes of unequal size who looked absurdly out of place in a cabdriver's pristine, white-gloved uniform, lowered the window about halfway and cocked a sparse eyebrow inquisitively.

"Is this—the cab—for the Student Council?" Haruto asked, panting for breath after his run.

"Are you _on_ the Holy Student Council?" the driver came back in a peculiarly raspy voice. But although rough, the man's voice didn't hold the sneer that Haruto would have expected from someone who had heard that Saitou High's Student Council was "holy".

That was when he noticed that the cab didn't, technically, have wheels. Or even wheel wells. The bottom of the vehicle's body was completely flat…and about a foot removed from the ground. The cab was floating.

_Please let it be a government prototype for a flying car,_ he wished fervently. But he knew that he wasn't to have any such luck. Now that he looked harder at the cab, he could see a faint luminescence around it, almost invisible in the daylight, accompanied by a small swarm of lazily swirling will-o-wisps. It was a ghost taxi, and the driver—obviously enough now that Haruto thought about it—was a spirit.

He realized that he was recoiling with clenched teeth, and made himself relax. Just then, Kazumi and Mutsuki arrived, the former exhibiting the slouched shuffling gait and glazed expression that meant he was in the process of being possessed by some minor ghost or other.

"Morning, Kaichou," Mutsuki greeted him.

"Good morning, Asahina-kun," Haruto replied dully. He indicated Kazumi, whose face was starting to assume unearthly distortions that no human face was meant to assume. "Um…could you…?"

"Oh, right," Mutsuki said, giving Kazumi a light clout on the head to expel the specter. Kazumi's eyes brightened as a wisp of ephemera, not even distinct enough to be identifiable by species, drifted from his head.

"Morning, Kaichou!" he said brightly, if a bit tardily.

Haruto steeled himself to take command. "Well, what are we all waiting for? Let's get this show on the road." He reached for the handle of the rear driver's-side door—

—and suddenly he was seated in the center of the back seat, with multiple safety belts rearing up around him of their own accord, like poisonous snakes, and lunging to fasten across his shoulders and lap until he was strapped down as securely as a test pilot…or a mental patient. Kazumi and Mutsuki appeared to either side of him and were summarily restrained to much the same extent.

"Necessary precaution," the driver explained in his voice from the suburbs of the netherworld.

Haruto didn't even want to know _why_ it was necessary; he could only assume he would find out soon enough. The driver turned the key and shifted gears, and then the world exploded.

At least, that was what it felt like. If someone, long after the fact, had asked Haruto about the ghost cab's acceleration capabilities, his most conservative estimate would be that it could go from zero to infinity kilometers per hour instantly. During the fact, of course, he was in a state of such utter terror, too panicked even to scream, even to whimper, that he couldn't maintain any thoughts at all apart from, ironically, a sort of gladness that he had missed breakfast, because if he had eaten anything, it would promptly have redecorated the cab's immaculate interior. As it was, his stomach had decided to take up a semi-permanent residence about ninety meters behind the vehicle.

Fighting the insane acceleration of the cab and his own petrifaction, Haruto managed to turn his head a tiny bit first to one side, then the other, to take stock of his comrades. From what little he could see, they both looked as aghast as he felt, a fact which he found ever so slightly encouraging.

The cab streaked through the largely empty streets of the neighborhood surrounding the high school like a force of nature, making turns that didn't resemble hairpins nearly so much as they resembled fancy paper clips and leaving afterimages in the air. It approached a large intersection, and Haruto realized with unreserved horror that they were about to join the main mass of commuter traffic on a major street…and the driver showed no signs that he intended to apply the brakes any time soon.

"Shouldn't we slow down?" Haruto managed to gasp out, wondering whether his words would actually reach the driver before the taxi left the very sound of them behind.

Something glowed in the vicinity of the rear-view mirror: a small black placard on which eerie green traceries spelled out the message PLEASE DO NOT SPEAK TO THE DRIVER. Haruto thought that was ludicrous, since the driver's performance could not possibly be any more reckless if he were under general anesthesia (assuming ghosts could be anesthetized), let alone just because a passenger said something to him…but it was far too late to worry about it. Better to take solace in the fact that at these speeds, death would be instantaneous when the collision occurred.

Then the collision occurred, except that it didn't. At the last possible instant, the driver turned a knob on the dashboard, there was a noise somewhere between a _pop_, a _whoosh_, and a _boing_, and the world around the cab turned hazy and semi-transparent. The cab passed completely through the other vehicles on the road without so much as disturbing the paint. And while the ghost car continued to move just as quickly as it had been up to that point, it no longer _felt_ like it was going so fast. The motion was as gentle as it was swift. Accordingly, most of the labyrinthine seat belts unfastened themselves, leaving the three passengers in the relative comfort of single lap straps. The function of that little knob was obvious—it turned the cab and all its contents immaterial, freeing them from things like the laws of inertia.

"Hey, cool!" said an amazed Kazumi. "Is that a standard feature?"

The sign about not talking to the driver turned itself on again. Kazumi shut up, pouted briefly, and then turned his attention to the world outside the window.

Traveling in an ethereal conveyance was…well, it was weird. It took Haruto a while to get used to the idea that they weren't going to—that they couldn't—crash into anything. Not the other cars, not the buildings, not the lampposts, not the pedestrians and bicyclists, not the food carts on the sidewalks, not the barriers blocking off areas that were under construction, not the construction equipment, not the construction workers, not the barriers on the other side of the blocked-off areas… Presumably, other ghostly objects and people would have been a danger, but there were few if any such things sharing the living world with them in daylight. Once the fact of their absolute safety was firmly in mind, however, he managed to relax and enjoy the trip. Altogether, it was not unlike riding cross-country in a mag-lev bullet train—high but extraordinarily smooth speed, no competition on the roadway, and nothing to do but watch the scenery pass. The scenery on a bullet train ride typically looked more real and solid due to being completely on the same plane of existence as the train itself, but apart from that, the similarity was uncanny.

"Where do you think we're going?" Mutsuki queried.

"I couldn't begin to guess," Haruto replied with total honesty.

Mutsuki opened her purse and pulled out the envelope which the Chairman had given her the previous evening. She toyed with it, staring at it as though trying to look straight through the manila paper to the contents.

"Why don't you open it now?" Kazumi asked. "I don't think you'll lose anything between here and wherever it is we're going."

"Great idea, Kazumi! I believe I will!" she piped. She put one well-kept thumbnail to a corner of the packet.

Rather abruptly, the taxi slowed down as the world outside snapped back into focus. Mutsuki lost her grip on the envelope, lunged to catch it, and sent it bouncing around the back seat to be snatched at by all three Council members until Haruto managed to take hold of it.

"On second thought, let's wait till we've stopped," she said as though nothing had happened.

"Sir?" Haruto called toward the front of the cab. "Are we almost there?"

PLEASE DO NOT SPEAK TO THE DRIVER.

"Never mind," the president sighed.

They were pulling up behind a long line of cars in a hedge-lined parkway. It all seemed vaguely familiar to Haruto, but before he could puzzle it out, his younger partners on either side of him let out twin squeaks of delight.

"I know where this is!" Mutsuki squealed.

"Me too me too me too!" Kazumi joined in, literally bouncing in his seat.

Haruto felt a familiar sinking sensation. If those two were so excited to be arriving at wherever this was, he was probably in for a trying, tiring day. They were never so hard to keep in line as when they were having a lot of fun. He rolled his eyes heavenward, and that's when he saw it, spanning the avenue like the gateway into a new world, so brightly colored that it almost made his eyes throb to look at it.

WELCOME TO TOKYO DISNEYLAND RESORT, it said. PLEASE GIVE PARKING FARE TO BOOTH ATTENDANT.

To Be Continued…


	2. Chapter 2: Getting Started, Or Not

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction_ and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 2: Getting Started…Or Not

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"This is going to be the most fun ever!" Mutuski bubbled, clutching her pre-paid "Tokyo Disneyland Resort One-Day Passport"—three of which had constituted the entire contents of the mysterious envelope—as the Holy Student Council members made their way from the taxi drop-off to the front entrance. "I haven't been here in _years_!"

"Don't forget," Haruto warned, "we're here to do a job, not to play."

"Lighten up, Kaichou!" Kazumi admonished him. "This is _Disneyland_! Chairman said he thought we'd have fun…and he even bought us these Passports instead of the regular admission tickets, so we can ride all the rides as many times as we want without having to buy those stupid gouging letter coupons. So who are we to disappoint him?"

"I think we'll disappoint him more if we don't complete our assignment."

"So who says we can't do both?" Mutuski pointed out. "How long can it possibly take to find this ghost and convince him to leave?"

"You've both been here, right?" said Haruto.

"Yes," they chorused.

"Have you forgotten how big this place is? And how crowded? Just the searching alone could take most of the day!"

"Have you forgotten who we are?" Mutsuki came back in a voice that was dripping with sugared acid. "Kaichou, we can _sense_ ghosts. And remember what else Chairman said? He said his friend doesn't like company. It's not like we'll have a lot of ghosts to sift through."

"If you two are so confident that it won't take long to do this job, then you won't mind doing it _first_, before we do anything else, up to and including cotton candy," Haruto said, folding his arms with authoritative decisiveness. He almost immediately wished he hadn't mentioned food, as his lack of breakfast began asserting itself with even more authority.

The lines at the ticket booths were next to monstrous, but with their pre-paid tickets, the Council was able to pass that mess by and directly join the small-to-middling but growing throng that awaited the opening of the gates.

"How long till it opens?" Kazumi wondered, lapsing a bit into his Kansai drawl.

Haruto checked his watch, a sign near the entrance, and his watch again, before answering. "About an hour, it looks like."

"I don't wanna wait for a whole hour!" Kazumi despaired. "Can't we—you know—sneak in through the back gate or something?" He started to get twitchy.

"Kazumi! Heel!" Mutsuki commanded the younger boy, bringing his restlessness up short. "Look at it this way," she continued philosophically. "Having to wait will make it all the more fun when we finally get in."

"That's easy for you to say," he pouted. "When was the last time you were here?"

"Eighth grade," she replied a tad bit sharply. "My parents used to take me at least once or twice a year, but then Grandma retired and Dad took over managing the shrine and we just never had the time anymore."

Kazumi was only briefly disarmed. "See? You're used to being away from this place. But me—I was here just last summer! I _miss_ it more than you do! I'm like—like—like—"

"Like a recovering drug addict?" Haruto guessed.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far…" Kazumi muttered.

"What about you, Kaichou?" Mutsuki continued. "When was the last time you were here?"

"Gosh, it's been ages. I think I was eight or so. I used to come with my grandfather every so often. He said it was to give me a treat and my parents a break from raising me…although I think it was as much a treat for me to get away from them for a day…" He paused, clearing his throat, and got back to the subject. "But after he got sick, he couldn't spend an entire day walking anymore, so…" He trailed off, stifling poignant memories.

"Well, we're all here now," Kazumi said, picking up the cue that Haruto needed a change of subject, or at least of mood. "So let's make this the most fun Disneyland trip in the history of the world!"

"Right after we complete our assignment," Haruto tacked on.

"Sure," Mutsuki and Kazumi chorused boredly.

Not long afterward, the gates of the park were opened to the waiting crowd to the rousing strains of "The Mickey Mouse Club March" played by a red-uniformed marching band. It wasn't truly opening time yet, but guests were being admitted to the World Bazaar, the avenue of shops and restaurants, quaintly designed to resemble a small American town around the turn of the 20th century, that led into the park proper. (It is sound business sense to give your customers extra time in which to spend money.) Kazumi began visibly vibrating with excitement. Haruto considered telling the younger boy to settle down, but decided it would be a lost cause. The multitude shuffled forward, funneling through the narrow turnstiles, a chintzy recorded bell-like sound accompanying each swiped ticket. An interminable few minutes passed, and then the Council was through, with an entire day ahead of them and the Happiest Place on Earth (in Japan, at any rate) waiting.

"So, what should we do first, Kaichou?" Mutsuki inquired, putting a slight, mildly biting emphasis on Haruto's title.

"You already know what I think our priorities are," he replied.

"Buuuuuuut, the place isn't really open yet," she pointed out. "Just this little area of shops and cafés and stuff. We can't even start on our assignment for another—" She glanced at her watch. "—half an hour."

"Unless," Kazumi said with a valiant attempt at shrewdness, looking around at the pastel-painted buildings and up at the reinforced glass canopy covering the avenue, "the ghost is hiding somewhere in the World Bazaar."

"I doubt it," said Haruto, somewhat to the surprise of the other two. "There's too much foot traffic here to suit any kind of ghost other than a school spirit. Besides," he added sheepishly as his stomach loudly protested his neglect of it, "I _really_ need to eat something."

And so it was that the first bit of Disney magic that the Holy Student Council experienced came in the form of pastries and coffee at the Center Street Coffeehouse. The pastries were delicious. They were also at least twice as expensive as the same thing would have been outside the park.

They had not quite finished eating when there was a sort of bustle outside. It was nine o'clock, and the park proper was open for business.

"It's time!" Kazumi thrilled. "Hurryuphurryuphurryuplet'sgolet'sgolet'sgo!"

"Uh-oh, he'll be bouncing off the walls at any minute," Mutsuki observed. "We'd better get him outside where there's at least more room."

"Go ahead," Haruto nodded. "I'll just be a moment. Do _not_ let him run off, and don't go far. I'm counting on you!"

"Yes, sir!" she replied, rising from her chair with a snappy salute. She took her subordinate by the arm and began leading him toward the door. "Come along, young man. This is the last time we let you drink coffee in public."

It was one of those rare occasions on which Haruto was in complete agreement with his second-in-command. Kazumi was hyperactive enough without significant quantities of caffeine running through his bloodstream. Glad of at least a brief moment of solitary peace, he polished off his breakfast a little more slowly than was strictly necessary. He took an additional moment to conscientiously clear away his trash, then went outside to rejoin his comrades.

They were nowhere to be seen—at least not immediately. But of course it was early yet, there were still people filing into the park through the main gate, and maybe Mutsuki and Kazumi were just hidden behind other tourists. Haruto ambled around semi-aimlessly, seeing if he could spot them. No sign of either made itself known. He peered into shops, on the off chance that they had decided to do a little impromptu shopping while waiting for him to finish eating. He even called their names—_once_, upon which he realized that any further action to that effect would attract a lot of embarrassing attention from the other people in the area.

After a few minutes of futile searching, he bowed to the awful reality. He had been a fool to trust Mutsuki. They had ditched him—worse, they had abandoned their duty as members of the Holy Student Council. He was alone in fulfilling his responsibility to the Chairman.

Also, they had taken the guide map. That wasn't a big handicap, as he could go to the information desk and request a replacement, but it meant additional lost time. He made a strange picture as he trudged back toward the front gate—a lone boy, hanging his head in despair while surrounded by the nostalgic wonder of the most famous theme park in the world.

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There weren't any walls within easy reach, so Kazumi bounced along the ground. He couldn't help it. He was at Disneyland! (Also, he had a coffee buzz.)

"What should we go on first, sempai?" he wondered aloud.

Mutsuki fumbled with the guide map. "Jeez, you need an advanced degree in engineering just to open these things," she muttered. "Aha! Here we go!" She scanned the map and the accompanying lists of rides and attractions, and a slow grin grew on her face until it reached fairly scary proportions. "How does Fantasyland sound?" she said, the evenness of her tone clearly forced.

"Sounds great!" Kazumi agreed, oblivious. "I like fast rides better myself, but I can understand why you'd prefer slower ones."

"And why would that be?" Mutsuki challenged him with narrowed eyes.

"Well—you know," he replied, sensing danger but plowing ahead anyway. "So your hair won't get messed up in the wind. Girls are sensitive about their hair."

Mutsuki planted a fist in the crown of Kazumi's head. "Moron," she informed him.

"Sorry, sempai," he croaked.

They reached the end of the World Bazaar and began crossing Parkwide, the central "hub" area of the park from which the entrances to all the themed lands radiated like wheel spokes. At the far side, Cinderella's Castle—the centerpiece of the Magic Kingdom—rose in blue-turreted splendor, its pastel color scheme somehow complementing the Gothic architecture rather than clashing with it. The early-morning sunlight gleamed off the white bricks and golden spires and many-colored heraldic banners draped over the parapets, making the entire edifice look as though it were truly a magical construction, rather than the cunningly disguised concrete and plaster that it was.

"You know, I never realized before how gaudy that thing is," Mutsuki remarked, gazing up at it as she and Kazumi crossed the bridge over the Castle's "moat"—actually an artificial pond inhabited by ordinary ducks and a few imported white swans.

"Shall we take…the tour?" Kazumi asked in a tone of voice that completely failed to sound creepy. He was referring to the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, a D-ticket attraction that consisted of following a costumed guide up and down staircases in the castle and looking at stuff.

"Don't be silly," Mutsuki replied. "It's too dark in there."

It was fairly dark where they were just at the moment, which underneath the main archway of the Castle, but in the next instant they emerged back into the sunlight. They were in Fantasyland, colorful bastion of magic, whimsy, and classic Disney animated films.

"Dark?" Kazumi continued. "Sempai, don't tell me you're afraid of the dark!"

She raised her fist again; he ducked precautiously. "Don't be ridiculous, Kazumi. Of course I'm not afraid of the dark! But I want to be able to see what I'll be looking at!"

"And that would be…?" her junior inquired.

"Just look around you!" Mutsuki thrilled, sweeping her arms grandly to indicate the entirety of Fantasyland.

Kazumi looked around him. Same old Fantasyland, with no difference that he could see from the last time he was there except maybe a fresh coat of paint. Besides the buildings and other fixtures that he knew like the back of his hand, the only things to look at were a few birds anxiously awaiting dropped popcorn, and of course the tourists, who in Fantasyland mostly consisted of families with children…oh.

"Sempai, you're going _boy-watching_?" he gasped. "_Here?_ That's like—like sacrilege! Although I can't deny that it's a good place for it."

"I know," she sighed blissfully, gazing longingly at a lad of perhaps ten who skipped along the pavement with sheer childish abandon. "Too bad the weather's so cool this time of year."

Because none of the objects of her attraction would be wearing shorts to show off their smooth, hairless little-boy legs. Kazumi wondered how she managed to continue in her bizarre borderline perversion without a single pang of conscience…speaking of pangs of conscience, he was beginning to feel one himself, albeit on a much different subject.

"Sempai…" Kazumi said uncertainly, "…should we have left Kaichou all by himself back there?"

"Kazumi-kun, we had to," she replied solemnly. "The way he was going, this was the only way we'd manage to have any fun at all today. Besides, he'll catch up to us later."

"Oh, okay!" Kazumi said, relieved. "So, sempai, do you want to actually ride anything here?"

"Oh, yeah…" she said with a frightening lasciviousness, her eyes following every movement made by a skinny boy with an angelically adorable face. A small pool of saliva was starting to form at her feet, and some of the other guests were staring. Kazumi backed away, somewhat disgusted and certainly not eager to be associated with the girl and her indecent lust.

Fortunately, the angelic child and his family rounded a corner, and Mutsuki snapped out of her licentious trance. "I'm sorry, Kazumi-kun, could you say that again?"

"Uh…nothing," he said, deciding just to weather the storm. His senior would tire soon enough of looking without being able to touch.

And while he waited, he could always indulge in similar sport of his own. Disneyland wasn't just for little kids, obviously. He looked around to see if there were any cute girls nearby. He spotted a few, but they were only average-cute, nothing remarkable. But then, he saw…_her_.

She was the loveliest woman he ever could have imagined. Her dark hair, flawlessly styled, clustered close about her fair-skinned, unblemished, utterly adorable face. Her dress would have looked absurdly old-fashioned on anyone else, with its golden skirt almost brushing the ground and its high, puffed blue sleeves, but on her, it was perfect. A smile, unfading, was on her crimson lips. In complete trust, little children came to her and accepted loving embraces. Someone handed her a little book, and she produced a pen from somewhere on her person and wrote something in it—she was literate, too!—and then returned it to its owner. And Kazumi could tell just by looking that she was as pure and chaste as new-fallen snow, that she scarcely knew what a man was, let alone the ways of men with women. Surely, this was a maiden from a dream…or a fairy-tale.

Lost in bliss, Kazumi began to drift closer to her. Even if she never so much as glanced his way, it would be enough to be near her, in her perfect presence. And if she _did_ happen to glance his way, one thing could lead to another, and it would be his privilege to teach her all the things about the ways of men and women that she didn't know.

A flash, as of lightning, interrupted his reverie and brought him up short. No, it wasn't lightning, it was someone's camera.

"Kazumi-kun, what are you doing?" came Mutsuki's imperious voice, and cold reality slapped his daydream aside.

"Huh?" he murmured as the idyllic half-daze abruptly ended.

"And you call me weird. I didn't know you had a fetish for _Snow White_," the older girl said tartly.

Kazumi looked again. How in the world had he missed _that_? His dream girl was a costumed character—a young American woman hired and shipped over from the States by the Disney Corporation for the express purpose of portraying Snow White at the Japanese park. She was pretty enough on her own, probably, but certainly not to the extent that was being achieved with heavy makeup and a black nylon wig. She was just another illusion in a land made of illusions. Oh, sure, _supposedly_ the artifices were not really meant to deceive, _supposedly_ the guests simply went along with the pretense for the sake of being entertained. But what happened when one of them became so involved with the fantasy as to truly believe, only to suffer a broken heart when clarity came again? _What then, huh!_

Without knowing to whom he spoke, or even that he voiced his thought aloud, Kazumi cried, "_Give me back my dream!_" Everyone within earshot—that is to say, quite a large area, given the volume at which he shouted—turned to stare at him as though he were possessed (which, for once, he wasn't). He noticed their attention quite suddenly, and attempted to collapse in on himself in acute embarrassment.

"Are you quite finished?" Mutsuki asked him petulantly.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said, much calmer now that he had gotten the expression of disappointment out of his system. "And you? Done looking at boys for now?"

"For now," she agreed. "C'mon, let's go on some rides!"

"Okay!"

And just like that, the past half-hour was forgotten.

To Be Continued…


	3. Chapter 3: About Spirits

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction_ and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 3: About Spirits

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"Okay, Haruto. You can do this, Haruto. You don't need those traitors, Haruto. Stop talking to yourself, Haruto!"

Besides a mantra that was somewhat suggestive of multiple personality disorder, Haruto had a plan. It was a simple and efficient plan, which was what he liked about it. He would start in Adventureland and work his way clockwise around the park. For now, he would just do a cursory inspection and get ideas as to where the ghost might be hiding; later, he would come back and check more closely into any leads he found. It was clean, it was logical, and he could accomplish it without the dubious "help" of his unreliable "colleagues". Let them have their fun. He would be faithfully diligent until the task was done, no matter what it meant missing out on.

Not for the first time, he found himself lamenting his sense of duty, which so often seemed to suck all the joy out of his life without granting him any benefit in return. But that was just the way things were. No honorable person would ignore an assignment just because they would rather do something else. Indeed, there was a _nobility_ in following orders that you personally disliked, simply because they were the orders you were given. It was an ethic which Haruto had inherited twice over, as it was firmly ingrained not only in Japanese culture but in Christian ideals (although that did not explain why Mutsuki and Kazumi seemed to be lacking even the Japanese portion of the principle).

"Hey, don't start feeling sorry for yourself now, Haruto!" he reminded himself sharply. "And stop talking to yourself! People will think you're crazy!"

_Maybe I am crazy_, he mused soberly, walking under the bamboo archway that marked the entrance to Adventureland. _I mean, I do hang out with ghosts almost every day. If that's not a symptom of insanity, it's probably a leading cause._ He stopped that line of thinking before it turned into self-pity again.

Haruto had always liked Adventureland. The attractions were fairly relaxing without being boring, and the entire area was well-shaded due to the giant jungle trees and other tropical plants that were maintained there at probably considerable expense, given Tokyo's seasonal climate. But he didn't know if any part of it would be attractive to a ghost. Well, maybe Pirates of the Caribbean, which had marginally ghostly subject matter already. He made a mental note of it.

Then it was on to Westernland, themed to resemble the American wilderness frontier of the 19th century. Here, there was ample opportunity for a ghost to find a place of comfort, for so-called "ghost towns"—villages that failed, so that only ghosts were left to inhabit them—were, so Haruto understood, a popular part of the Old West tradition. The rust-colored spires of Big Thunder Mountain—actually concrete, but so cleverly painted that they could actually be mistaken for a Southwestern desert rock formation—loomed large in the nethermost corner of the area, daring passers-by to ride the roller coaster that wound through its gullies and caverns. Much of the rest of Westernland was taken up by a looping "river" called the Rivers of America, on which sailed the _Mark Twain_, a replica of a giant paddleboat such as those that cruised the mighty Mississippi during the era.

The next area on the clockwise circuit was Critter Country (which Haruto had always thought should just be part and parcel with Westernland, since it had a similar theme…albeit with more focus on animals that spoke and walked upright), but Haruto never got around to exploring it. For as he exited Westernland into the three-way intersection between it, Critter Country, and Fantasyland, he found himself opposite something so obviously connected to his quest that he should have thought of it at the outset.

The Haunted Mansion.

He had never really enjoyed it as a child. Intellectually, he always knew that the phantoms and specters in the attraction were fake—animatronic models and light projections and various other kinds of illusions—but on some deep instinctive level, he had been frightened of them. Perhaps it had been a precognitive warning that spirits would cause him no end of trouble later in life…but in any case, it had always been under duress that he had ridden the ride in his formative years, his grandfather's cheerful reassurances serving not to assuage his fears but only to make him quietly, rather than openly, terrified.

Regarding the bricks and tiles of the stately Victorian manor that constituted the attraction's outer façade, Haruto felt a twinge of his old dread of the imitation horrors within—maybe more than a twinge. He tried to brush it off, however, knowing that he had almost certainly found the wayward ghost's hiding place. The Chairman's words floated back to him: "_It seems the newcomer is very confused and thinks it has found a good place to stay…_" What could possibly seem more inviting to a confused ghost than an entire den of apparent ghosts who spent most of every day singing and making merry?

Suddenly, he felt ashamed of his misgivings. He had _absolutely no reason_ to be afraid of the Mansion. Or even nervous. For one thing, he wasn't a child anymore, he was a senior in high school. Statistically speaking, at his age he should be downright jaded toward almost everything, especially things which he had felt strongly about ten years past.

For another thing, the Haunted Mansion wasn't really haunted…at least, not usually. At the time, of course, it probably was, but not to the point that it pretended to be and that had alarmed Haruto when he was a kid. (It also was not, technically, a mansion—just a building shell housing the entrance to a hallway, which led to a separate warehouse-like building where the ride actually took place.)

And for a third thing, Haruto spent hours in the company of ghosts, almost every day. He had fought ravening demons, appeased the most spiteful and jealous spirits Japan had to offer, and even suffered the attentions of the embodiment of blackest despair. Whatever was lurking in the Mansion at the moment, assuming that it was in fact lurking there, was assuredly orders of magnitude less menacing than such beings as he had already faced—so mild, in fact, that it was not even disrupting the operation of the ride.

Mulling over those facts gave Haruto courage to approach the Mansion again…at least for a little while. He got almost to the front gate and then froze. Flanking the path were two pillars, and sitting on the pillars were two bronze statues of griffins—strange monsters from Western myth that combined features of eagles and lions—whose red eyes glowed balefully at all who passed between their perches. For a split second, he was six years old again, clutching his grandfather's hand as though it were a tree branch extending over a raging river, absolutely positive that _this_ time, the ghosts would be real and would insist that he join their number. His nerve broke, and he fled to the safety of the nearby Queen of Hearts' Hedge Maze.

The only other people in the Hedge Maze—not a very popular attraction—were two children, apparently brother and sister, who amused themselves playing Hide-and-Seek with each other amongst the neatly trimmed leaves. They paid no mind to Haruto as he dashed in and leaned against one of the hedges, breathing heavily and ignoring the twigs poking his back.

He was just calming down enough to try again when a sympathetic voice clucked at him. "Poor duck, took in too much of the ambience, did you? The Haunted Mansion has that effect on some people."

Haruto whipped his head around to find the speaker. She was sitting demurely on a white stone bench just a few feet away. He had been so wrapped up in overcoming his panic attack that he hadn't noticed her arrival.

"Oh! You can see me?" the woman started, rising from her seat. She was rather short, and fairly round, and peculiar in appearance in a way that was not _immediately_ obvious, but Haruto soon realized that she looked something like a computer-blended photo of a traditional Japanese woman and a wealthy European lady from eras past. Her dress was like a kimono from the neckline to the obi-wrapped waistline, but from that point down it expanded into a voluminous crenellated skirt that appeared to include a bustle. The square kosode sleeves were fringed with lace. Her silver-streaked hairstyle would not have been out of place in the 18th century French royal court, but it was held in place with lacquered chopsticks. Like any Japanese matriarch, she gesticulated with a fan that was stamped with a red rising sun—and fringed with ostrich feathers.

"Uh…" Haruto goggled, allotting a fair amount of brainpower just to the task of taking in the hybrid sight of her. When he found his tongue again, he said, "Well, of course I can see you. You're kind of hard to miss."

"Not to most people, I'm not," she said in a tone that could have been either smug or snide. Then she made a little chuckle and waved her fan about. "You must be one of Tatsugoro's delegates. You and your fellows split up for more efficient searching, did you, duck?"

Several things struck Haruto all at once. One of them was a corn chip thrown by the Hide-and-Seeking children, but the others were realizations. The first and most important was that the woman he was talking to was in fact the friend of the Chairman's whom he was at Disneyland to serve. That meant she was a ghost herself—and sure enough, underneath her capacious kimono-gown, her feet trailed off into a curling wisp of spirit vapor. The second was that she had referred to the Chairman by his given name; perhaps she and the school principal were, or had been at some point, or she wished they had been, something _more_ than mere acquaintances? (Not that it was any of his business.) The third was that in a just world, she would not have come to the conclusion that he and the others had split up, because they would not have ditched him in the first place.

The fourth was that she kept calling him "duck". That was bound to get annoying if it kept up.

"Uh, yeah, I am," he said with a perfunctory bow of introduction. "Haruto Houjo, President of Saitou High School's Holy Student Council."

"A pleasure," she said sweetly, bowing back. "You may call me Madam Miyako. But aren't there supposed to be two others?"

"Yes," Haruto sighed heavily, plunking down on the bench beside her. "It's kind of a long story. But anyway, I think the other ghost—the one you want to get rid of?—I think it's hiding in the Haunted Mansion! I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Well, duck, I could have told you that," Madam Miyako said, fanning herself vigorously for a moment. "Even I find the place irresistible on occasion. Why, just last week, I spent three days in there without realizing it!

"And that," she continued, taking on a somewhat darker tone of voice, "is why I must insist that my…visitor…be removed as soon as possible. It simply isn't quite safe here for our kind…" She trailed off.

"What do you mean?" Haruto asked. "I thought you were just being territorial or something."

"Not at all, duck," Miyako replied. "This place has…strange effects on spirits. You mortals are very fortunate in that you can define your own identities. We, on the other hand, tend to take on whatever forms and natures are given to us. You don't really think I dressed like _this_ in life, do you?"

"I wouldn't know, ma'am."

"Well, I didn't. I died right in this area in the year 1854. There was little enough Western culture here then, and certainly not enough to inspire someone to make a ridiculous fashion statement like _this_! It's this place that does it, Houjo-kun. Do you know what Disneyland is built on?"

"Um…the ground?"

"No, silly boy! Well, yes, but I didn't mean what is it _literally_ built on. What is it built on in spirit? Imagination! The dreams and fantasies that Mr. Walt Disney gave to humanity. People come here expecting a certain atmosphere, and in so doing, they add to it. And thus the spiritual landscape changes, and any spirit beings present change along with it. You mortals can define your own identities. We spirits are susceptible to becoming whatever _you_ think we are."

"I'm still not sure I understand," said Haruto. "What do you mean, you can't define your own identities?"

"Let me give you an example," Miyako suggested, snapping her fan shut. "Do any of your school lavatories have a Miss Hanako in residence?"

"Yes," Haruto confirmed. "Actually, there are a whole bunch of them. Chairman keeps collecting more."

"You don't think they were all named Hanako when they were alive, do you? Or that they were all flirts?"

"Probably not," he conceded, and then it dawned on him. "You mean, Miss Hanako is like—" He grasped for words. "—like a role that they take on? That they have to take on, because of how people perceive them?"

"That will do for an explanation. You mortals expect certain ghosts to be pretty and flirtatious, and call them Miss Hanako, and so that's what they become. It is very difficult for us _not_ to fulfill your stereotypes of us."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, Houjo-kun," Madam Miyako said airily. "In the first place, it isn't your fault. In the second place, it is the business of spirits to exemplify concepts; you mortals merely choose which ones. At any rate, there isn't much room for the concept of a traditional Japanese matriarch here. And so little by little, I change. I become less like who I was in life, and more like, well, a Disney character. And I find myself drawn to the Haunted Mansion, because within the bounds of this park, that is where ghosts _belong_."

"That's so tragic!" Haruto gasped.

"Not really, duck," she reassured him, patting his shoulder. "It's not a bad sort of existence. I find that the new me suits me as well as the old did. But not all spirits would enjoy such a transformation. For many, this vision—" She waved her fan around at the scenery, most of which, from their viewpoint, consisted of shrubbery. "—is stifling, or worse. I don't want any of my fellow spirits to come to such a fate unless they wish it and are truly prepared for it."

"But if they didn't like it, couldn't they just…leave?"

"Easier said than done, Houjo-kun. The spiritual energy here is quite intense (although nothing like what it is at your school, of course), and, in a sense, addictive. Spirits who stay here for even a brief period find, not that they _can't_ leave, but that they simply lack the volition to try. It doesn't occur to them, like my forgetting to leave the Mansion for three days. Even you mortals can feel its power, can't you? It takes a very sour person indeed to remain in a bad mood once he passes through those gates, and even the staunchest of 'morning people' can stay up past midnight without feeling drowsy. The energy here is not a bad thing by any means—but it is not for everyone, and it is very, very strong. I don't want to drive away my fellow ghosts so much as I want to enlighten them as to the nature of this place. And that is where you come in, duck. I am already too much a part of this park to be very convincing as a real person, so to speak."

"I see," Haruto said, mulling over her words. There was still so much about spirits that he didn't know, evidently. Despite Madam Miyako's consolations, the idea of having one's characteristics delineated mainly by what others thought of you seemed unbearably tragic. Yet, he reflected, it was not entirely different for living people, was it? Everyone had to live up to certain standards that others set, or suffer the consequences. The difference, he supposed, was that mortals _could_ choose to suffer those consequences, while the disembodied didn't even have that option. They could no more be other than what they were supposed to be than he could stop being human. They could only forge as much of their own selves as the living people around them _didn't_ anticipate.

"Cheer up, duck!" Miyako suddenly intruded on his rather melancholy ponderings. "You look like someone's just told you your cat died! Have you forgotten where you are? This is a place for fun!"

"I know, I know. But for now, I have a job to do." He rose to his feet, raised one fist to about shoulder level, inclined his head slightly upward, breathed deeply, and set out to resume his quest.

"That's telling them, duck," the ghostly woman drawled with just a hint of sarcasm, fading out of visibility behind him.

Haruto found the exit to the Hedge Maze and paused there for a moment, looking first to the right—where the Haunted Mansion still loomed—and then left—where the jewel-hued geometric patterns of the façade of "it's a small world" presented a very different atmosphere. And there he saw something almost totally unexpected: Mutsuki and Kazumi clambering into one of the attraction's small pastel-colored boats.

"Hey!" he expostulated. "HEY!" Then it occurred to him that this was actually a blessing, that he could wait by the ride's exit and waylay his wayward companions. So he did.

To Be Continued…

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_A/N: I've never actually been to Tokyo Disneyland Resort. I have been to the original Disneyland in Anaheim about 200 times, and I have visited Walt Disney World in Florida once. Knowing that the Japanese Magic Kingdom is similar, but not identical, to the American ones, I did a fair amount of research while writing this in order to make sure that my descriptions were broadly correct. On the level of fine detail, though, I had to cheat. No amount of sterile research can substitute for intimate memories built up over years. Forced to choose between strict accuracy and vivid imagery, I have chosen the latter. I have described the details of the Tokyo Disneyland attractions and ambience, particularly the interior of the Haunted Mansion, as though they _were_ identical to those of Anaheim Disneyland, since that is what I know and can portray with the care I felt it deserved._

_At this time I would also like to offer a SPOILER WARNING for the chapters ahead. I am going to reveal the secrets behind many of the special effects in the Haunted Mansion attractions—so if knowing how the magic works would ruin it for you, proceed with caution._

_—Karalora_


	4. Chapter 4: The Business At Hand

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction _and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 4: The Business At Hand

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The boat floated lazily in the water, propelled forward at considerably less than walking speed by rotating gears and rubber wheels set at intervals in the looping canal, and between those by the constant nudging of the boats behind. The sharp, caustically hygienic smell of chlorine was thick in the air, but not half so thick as the music—a recording, as endless looping as the waterway, of children singing in no fewer than fourteen languages. The song itself was so uplifting and blindly optimistic as to be nauseating to any normal person over the age of eight. Kazumi enjoyed it primarily for its nostalgic value, calling to mind halcyon days of childhood when his greatest worry was that he wouldn't be able to fake his way out of homework…although come to think of it, that was still pretty much his greatest worry. No wonder he retained some fondness for the overwhelming corniness of "it's a small world".

Mutsuki, of course, had her own reasons for appreciating the tribute to the children of the world. As the pastel-green boat drifted past the cartoonishly exaggerated representations of national cultures, she busily scribbled on a small notepad:

NORWAY – blond  
ENGLAND – Schoolboys in SHORTS!  
FRANCE – romantic (French kiss)  
IRELAND – freckles, cute accents  
INDIA – shirtless

Her ambition to travel the world dating pretty young boys had not lessened a whit, and the ride's theme only served to illustrate examples of the charms which boys of various ethnicities had to offer.

"I love this ride," she averred languidly.

Kazumi espied her list. "That's it. We're going to the Diamond Horseshoe next," he insisted.

"I suppose we can manage that," she replied in a vaguely patronizing tone.

By and by, the ride came to an end. The boat floated back out into the sunshine, and Mutsuki and Kazumi disembarked and made their way to the exit—where they were abruptly confronted by Haruto's scowling face.

"Gotcha!" he proclaimed, seizing each of them by a wrist.

"Kaichou!" they chorused in surprise.

"What is the matter with you?" Haruto ranted at them. "What's the big idea with running off to play and leaving me all by myself to do the work?"

"What's the matter with us? What's the matter with _you_?" Mutsuki challenged, yanking her arm free. "Kaichou, all you ever do is work! You even turn it into work when you're trying to quit this line of work! I don't think I've _ever_ seen you really relaxing or having fun. I'm not sure you even know _how_ to have fun! And lately you've been trying to keep us from having fun either! First the auditorium and now this! We had to do something or you would have ruined Disneyland for us too! Kazumi-kun, back me up."

Kazumi remained silent, somewhat cowed by his superiors' argument.

"I do too know how to have fun!" Haruto spluttered, slightly thrown by her counter-tirade. "But _I_ also know when not to screw around, which you apparently haven't learned yet!"

"So prove you know how to have fun!" Mutsuki came back. "Pick a ride for us to go on, right now!"

"Why, you…you're just trying to avoid—" was as far as Haruto got before the part of his brain that was accusing Mutsuki was savagely kicked by the part which understood that the call of duty practically demanded that they go on a particular ride at that time. "—fine," he finished. "I will prove it! We're going on…_that_ ride!" And he extended his left arm to point dramatically at the Haunted Mansion.

"Good choice!" Kazumi agreed enthusiastically. Mutsuki scowled for an instant and then acquiesced.

Flanked by his comrades, Haruto found it much easier to enter the faux-forbidding grounds of the attraction…not easy per se, but easier. The griffins were still very unsettling, for instance, but with a fellow Council member on either side of him, he felt…buffered? That was the only way to describe it, silly as he knew the sentiment was.

The line moved quickly enough, and the Holy Student Council soon found themselves being ushered into the Mansion's foyer by park employees costumed as butlers and chambermaids. "Have a _frightfully_ good time," one of the men invited the crowd of guests in an entertainingly melodramatic tone of voice. Kazumi giggled with delight.

Mutsuki's suspicions were suddenly aroused. "Kaichou…" she growled dangerously.

"Yes?" Haruto said with exaggerated politeness.

"You tricked us, didn't you?" she hissed, refraining from raising her voice the better to maintain the attraction's atmosphere of tomblike quietude, enlivened only by the flickering of the electric candles in the wall sconces and on the hanging chandelier, and by the distant-sounding droning of a funereal organ. "This is about that assignment, isn't it? The ghost is hiding on this ride!"

"Turnabout is fair play," he pointed out. "Just keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary while we're on the ride. This way, you two can have some fun and we can get our job done at the same time."

"When hinges creak in doorless chambers," a sepulchral disembodied voice began, making the three of them jump slightly, "and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls…whenever candle lights flicker where the air is deathly still…that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight."

The show had begun. A door panel slid silently open, allowing the massed guests to enter the tall, narrow octagonal chamber beyond. Once they were all inside, the panel slid closed again, leaving identical, apparently doorless walls on all eight sides.

"Welcome, foolish mortals, to the Haunted Mansion!" the announcement continued sonorously. "I am your host: your 'Ghost Host.'"

The Ghost Host continued his recorded spiel while the ceiling rose and two nested sections comprising the walls slid past each other, making the room stretch eerily upward. Only after a startling moment when the lights went out and the ceiling seemed to vanish, allowing lightning flashes to illuminate a tattered skeleton hanging by the neck in the rafters overhead, did another wall open onto the hallway.

"I hate that part," Haruto muttered _sotto voce_, taking a moment to clutch his crucifix for comfort.

"It's okay, Kaichou," Mutsuki said encouragingly. "You know how they do that? The ceiling is actually—ack!" An over-eager guest bumped her from behind, nearly knocking her over. All thoughts of explaining the illusion to her fretful president vanished in a flash of pique. "Lousy clumsy careless—! Honestly, people can be so rude! Well, anyway, let's get this over with. What exactly are we doing?"

"Looking for the ghost, of course," Haruto explained.

The girl snorted. "And exactly where in the haystack do you suppose the needle is?"

"I—don't know!" Haruto spluttered. "But Madam Miyako—that's the friend the Chairman mentioned—said the ghost was here. We'll just have to look for something that seems out of place, somehow… Kazumi-kun, you've been here the most recently and the most often. If you see anything you don't recognize—anything at all—point it out."

"Yes, sir!" Kazumi barked with a snappy salute.

They were approaching the loading area, where more uniformed employees were helping the guests climb into "Doom Buggies", the ride's signature vehicles that strongly resembled giant upright eggshells, three-quarters complete and painted blue-black, with cushioned seats mounted inside, moving along in an endless cavalcade.

"Will we all fit in one?" Kazumi wondered. The Doom Buggies were designed to hold two or three people, but it was generally understood that the latter only applied if at least two of the three were small children.

"Maybe not," Haruto admitted, "but we're all getting in one anyway." He was not letting the other two out of his sight again.

As it happened, they fit, but _extremely_ snugly. It was like being in the backseat of the ghost taxi all over again (before it turned ethereal), but instead of heavy nylon straps, they were locked in place by the breadth of their own pelvic girdles.

The Ghost Host began speaking to them from inside the Doom Buggy, giving them cursory safety warnings and admonishing them not to take flash photos. The front part of the Doom Buggy moved on its hinges to bring a horizontal restraint bar across their laps, ensuring that if they took it into their heads to hop out of the transport mid-ride, they would not be able to actually do so—at least, not casually.

After that, it was all business. Nothing spoils the wonders of a favorite theme park ride like having to scrutinize every square centimeter of it in search of some unknown thing that shouldn't be there (and might, after all, not be).

"What if we don't find it?" Mutsuki asked, lowering her voice out of consideration for the riders in adjacent Doom Buggies.

"Then we'll just have to ride again," Haruto replied. "As many times as it takes."

"But that could take _all day_!" Mutsuki protested, her voice taking on whining tones in her girlish consternation. "There are other rides in this park, you know!"

"Then maybe you should look harder for the ghost, so that we can get this over with and enjoy those other rides," Haruto suggested calmly.

Mutsuki grumbled, but went back to her task, realizing that the president was not going to let her have any more fun until they finished the job regardless of her objections, so she might as well go to it on the odds that they could thereby finish sooner.

They didn't find the ghost. The ride came to an end without even a hint of anything amiss showing up, and they were hustled out of the Doom Buggy and directed up the moving ramp, which took them past one final scene of a miniature woman (actually a doll with a moving face projected like a movie onto its featureless head) wailing softly in English before depositing them at the exit of the ride. Pressed from behind by other riders, the Holy Student Council moved quickly into the sunlight and stood out of the way of the foot traffic to regroup and discuss their next move.

First they confirmed that none of them had seen anything unexpected, apart from a few hydraulically powered dummies that sprang up from behind headstones in the graveyard scene to surprise riders, which wasn't the kind of "unexpected" they were after. Kazumi got grilled the most by the other two since he was the most familiar with the ride of the three of them. Once that was settled, Haruto immediately announced that they were going right back on the ride. The other two had known this was coming, and didn't argue.

So they rode through again, cramming once more into a single Doom Buggy and inspecting the minutiae of the attraction. Again, no anomaly presented itself to their questing eyes (and ears); all was as it should have been.

So they trooped in for a third trip. And at last, one of them noticed something. As the Ghost Host thundered out his grim narration for the stretching gallery, Mutsuki suddenly stabbed her index finger into the air with a triumphant "Aha!"

"What? Did you see something? Or hear something? What is it?" Haruto demanded, nearly frantic with interest.

"The Ghost Host!" the girl elucidated, completely oblivious to the fact that she was disturbing the other guests. "Doesn't he sound like the Count from the movie _Castle of Cagliostro_?"

Haruto and Kazumi both fell over with the anti-climax of it all. When Haruto regained his feet, he leaned over his junior colleague and ranted at her. "We have an important job to do and we're not making much headway and you're sitting around comparing _seiyuu_?"

"Jeez, Kaichou, I just noticed, is all. If it makes you feel any better, I doubt we lost anything from my noticing. I don't know about you, but I don't think we're gonna find that ghost _this_ time around, either."

"You're probably right," Haruto sighed. The exit doors opened, but instead of continuing down the hallway, they stood to one side just beyond the sliding panels and let the other guests pass them while they continued to talk. "Do you think we can get an employee to let us out without going on the ride?"

"No!" Kazumi broke in with a voice that was meant to sound intimidating but, due to his ongoing puberty, sounded more like a chicken clucking. "Didn't you hear the man? 'There's no turning back now!'" He erupted in a pale imitation of the Ghost Host's sinister laughter. Haruto and Mutsuki traded meaningful glances that combined chagrin, exasperation, condescending amusement, and mild concern for their friend's sanity. _Isn't he weird?_ was the gist of those glances.

"Anyway," Mutsuki said, "I guess we've got to ride through again this time, but after that, can we _please_ do something else, Kaichou? This is futile! The ghost is probably hiding in some spot that you can't even see from the track. It might even be resting on the spirit plane, invisible. I doubt we'll be able to get any decent work done until after dark—probably not even until after the park closes. We might as well have fun until then. Visiting a theme park just to _work_…it's not normal!"

There was silence for a moment. "What did you say?" Haruto said at the end of it.

Mutsuki sensed that she had just discovered the magic word. "I said it's not normal to visit a theme park and not have any fun."

Haruto shut his eyes tightly while half a dozen different emotions argued with each other inside his head. Finally he opened them again and more-or-less surrendered. "All right. We can put off searching for the ghost for now."

"YAY!" Kazumi and Mutsuki cheered, exchanging a vigorous high-five.

"_But_," Haruto went on, just to assert his authority, "we're heading back here right at sundown. We'll work things out from there."

"Fair enough," the other two chorused.

"But," Kazumi continued, "do you _promise_ you'll have fun, Kaichou?"

That didn't sound to Haruto like the sort of thing a person could reliably make a promise about either way, moods being the involuntary things that they are, but Kazumi's tone sounded like he really did have his commander's best interests at heart, and Haruto resolved to do the best he could.

"I promise," he said simply.

"_O-kay!_" Mutsuki crowed in English. "Fun, here we come!"

Just then, a fresh batch of guests exited the stretching gallery, bowling right over the Holy Student Council in their high spirits. It was exactly the sort of thing that might have happened to them back on the Saitou campus, except that the stampede consisted of the living. Things were definitely getting back on track.

To Be Continued…

_A/N: The Japanese Ghost Host really does sound the Count from _Castle of Cagliostro_. It's not the same actor, though. I looked it up just to make sure._


	5. Chapter 5: The Plot Outright Curdles

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence:_ Haunted Junction _and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Part 5: The Plot Outright Curdles

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The next ten hours or so came to seem to Haruto like a kind of wonderful mistake, one that he would be delighted to repeat (although not necessarily anytime soon) and the consequences be damned. At first he fretted about so much lost time, but even he was not immune to the powerful atmosphere of which Madam Miyako had spoken. Within an astonishingly short time as these things go, his Inner Child first stirred, then strengthened, then burst its chains, then engaged his Outer Adult in single combat and won a spectacular victory. Then—and this was the really remarkable thing—the two merged into one being possessed of all the advantages of both maturity and childlikeness and none of the disadvantages of either. And that being was having the time of Haruto's life.

The rode the "dark rides" patterned after the Disney animated feature films, and Haruto remembered what it had been like seeing those movies for the first time and how impressive the fantastic settings—ably recreated with plaster and fiberglass and black light—had seemed. They rode the perennially popular family rides such as the Jungle Cruise, and Haruto was filled with the sheer nostalgia of the familiar animatronic figures and classic music and tasteless humor. They ate popcorn and cotton candy and ice cream bars, and he recalled how it was when nutrition was something for his parents to worry about, certainly no concern of his. They rode the roller coasters, and he discovered for the _first_ time the concept of pleasurable terror. He had never quite believed before that fear, when taken deliberately and in small doses, could actually be enjoyable.

The other two turned to each other periodically to whisper in happily excited tones about the unprecedented change that had come over their president. If the truth be told, they had often been genuinely worried about his apparent lack of joy in living, and were quite satisfied to see him taking pleasure in a simple day of play for once.

Most amazingly of all, when sunset rolled around, he completely brushed off his earlier admonition that they should revisit the Haunted Mansion to see if the errant ghost would emerge under cover of darkness. He claimed it was because the park was still much too crowded for them to accomplish anything productive, but Mutsuki and Kazumi suspected that he was having too much fun to stop now. That, if true, was so uncharacteristically frivolous of him as to constitute a miracle.

Eventually, however, it had to come to an end. It was a weekday, and the park closed promptly at ten o'clock on weekday evenings (except, again, for the World Bazaar, which stayed open for an additional hour in order to allow for plenty of last-minute shopping). Haruto reverted more-or-less to form, snapping back into his "stern authority figure" mode as soon as the announcement went out that Disneyland was closed for the day…but his eyes retained some of the gleam they had held all day—the spark of gladness that all people exhibit when they have amused themselves thoroughly for several hours straight. It was with genuine spirit that he cast off his school uniform to reveal the white cassock that constituted his official Holy Student Council costume. The other two followed suit—literally—Mutsuki changing into the white kimono and scarlet hibakama of a Shinto shamaness, and Kazumi into the white robe and purple kesa of a Buddhist priest. They were the Holy Student Council, and they were ready for action.

Their first order of business was to find a hiding place where they could wait out the phalanxes of security guards that were hustling lagging guests toward the front of the park. This was almost infinitely easier said than done. One of the security force's major worries was of delinquents, juvenile and otherwise, trying to stay in the park after hours and make trouble, and they had fairly elaborate measures to prevent such occurrences. To avoid attracting attention, the Council went along with the crowd for the nonce, all the while looking around for ways to dodge the guards.

When they reached the World Bazaar, they ducked into the nearest store and pretended to browse while continuing their search. They quickly discovered that a crowded, adequately staffed (barely) souvenir shop was not the best place to find a hideaway. Or even a good place. Or even a so-so place. Many of the prevalent anti-shoplifting measures also went a long way toward preventing non-employees from concealing themselves anywhere inside the store, usually by no coincidence.

"What do we do now, Kaichou?" Kazumi hissed. Even apart from their slightly odd behavior, they were drawing a few stares from people who, while they might not bat an eye at the sight of religious personnel visiting tourist attractions in their traditional uniforms, probably had not ever seen one Christian, one Shinto, and one Buddhist working together.

"I don't _know_," Haruto responded petulantly. "I can't _think_ with all these people around."

"I've got an idea," said Mutsuki suddenly. "Follow me."

They exited the store and zipped across the street to another shop, which sold mostly souvenir clothing of various kinds. Mutsuki snatched three sweatshirts off the rack, handed one to each of her male cohorts, and led the group to the changing stalls. They chose three consecutive booths and secreted themselves inside as though trying on the shirts.

"Can you think now, Kaichou?" she asked.

"I can try." There was a long pause, and then a sigh. "Nothing's coming to me."

"Well, you'd better think of something," said Kazumi. "They won't let us stay in here forever. And I'm already feeling cramped. And this sweatshirt is too tight."

Mutsuki lobbed one of her slippers over the divider between her stall and Kazumi's; uncannily, it landed square on his crown. "Oooowwww!" he complained.

"Idiot!" she reproached him. "You weren't supposed to try it on for real!"

"Not making much headway, duck?" said Madam Miyako's head, emerging from the back wall of Haruto's stall.

Haruto did a double-take, coming nose-to-nose with the strangely dressed woman ghost.

"EEEEEEYYYYYAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Oops! Didn't mean to scare you!" Miyako tittered, floating out of the wall until she was visible to the waist and fluttering her fan.

While Haruto was catching his breath, the other two burst from their booths and charged into his (Kazumi shedding his sweatshirt as he went) in order to see what was wrong with their president. This made for a very crowded stall indeed, especially since Miyako chose that inopportune moment to drift the rest of the way into the space and then materialize fully. When the dust cleared, the Holy Student Council was jammed into the cubicle in a tangled heap, with no apparent sense to the orientation of heads and limbs, while Miyako floated calmly above them. The stall door swung wildly on its hinges, bounced off the adjacent stall, and then slowly swung back the other way. Mutsuki, the only one in a position to see it, watched with horror as it crept in its slow arc, finally settling into its frame with an ominous _click_.

"Aw, crap," she opined.

"Don't you fret, duck, it'll just be a moment," Miyako offered.

After a moment, a store attendant came by and rapped on the door. "Are you all right in there, sir? I heard a noise."

"I'm fine!" Haruto croaked with difficulty, compressed as he was.

"If you need help, just call for an employee to assist you."

"Will…ugh…do!"

"So what now?" Mutsuki asked irritably. "We can't hunt ghosts if we're stuck like this. And who's _she_?" She jerked the only part of her body capable of significant movement—her left foot—upward toward the serenely hovering Madam Miyako.

"Be polite, Asahina-kun," Haruto forced out. "That's Madam Miyako, Chairman's friend. You know, the one who hired us for this mission?"

"Hired? I don't recall being offered any money," Mutsuki pouted. "Hey, you up there! How about helping us out?"

"Way ahead of you, duck!" Miyako piped cheerily. "I just need to find the right settings…and—there!"

The Holy Student Council sank through the floor of the changing stall. They didn't even have time to scream.

When the world came back into focus, they found themselves in a dimly lit space—still in a heap, but at least now they had enough room to disentangle themselves. They found the place to be a room about the size of a city apartment, with a decorating scheme that instantly pegged it as Madam Miyako's dwelling. Antique ukiyoe prints hung on the walls alongside Italian tapestries, gargoyle figurines shared shelf space with netsuke carvings, elegant French furniture sat primly on a floor carpeted with tatami. And to top it all off, Miyako herself lounged on a divan, half-reclining and fanning herself.

"Sorry about that, ducks I suppose I should have warned you, but it seemed we were short on time!"

"What just happened?" Mutsuki asked as she got to her feet and began working the kinks out of her back and limbs.

"I have a few spirit-gates around the park," the lady ghost explained casually. "It makes for quicker travel. Most of them lead back here. By great luck, the changing booth that Haruto here picked contains one of them. I just had to adjust the settings to allow mortals through."

"Are you Madam Miyako?" asked Kazumi.

"I am," she confirmed. "Welcome to my humble abode."

"Where is this place?" Haruto wondered, looking around. "There are no windows."

"We're a few meters below ground level," Miyako explained. "This used to be a storage shed, but it was walled off after some new construction. So I claimed it as my own. I kept some of the things that were left in it—see?" She indicated a Shetland pony-sized fiberglass sculpture of a pink elephant that stood in the corner.

"Very, um, nice," Mutsuki said diplomatically.

"Madam Miyako," Haruto said suddenly, hoping to get the mission back on track, "may we please stay in here until the park clears out?"

"But of course, duck! That's why I brought you here. I know those security guards wouldn't understand if you tried to tell them you had permission to stay overnight chasing a ghost… It should be safe in about an hour. Until then, make yourselves at home."

Kazumi yawned. He tried not to, but it came out when he tried to ask whether Miyako had any video games.

"Maybe we should take a nap," Mutsuki suggested. "We've all been awake for what, about sixteen or seventeen hours straight now? Even after we get back out there, it could take us a while to catch the ghost. We should refresh ourselves while we can."

"Excellent idea, Asahina-kun," Haruto agreed. "If it's all right with Madam Miyako, that is."

"But of course, ducks!" Miyako chirped. "I'm afraid I don't have a bed or any cots, but this sofa is nice and soft, and I think there are some spare cushions lying around somewhere."

"Good enough…for me," Kazumi said, his sentence broken in the middle by another yawn. "Thank you for your generosity." This sentence was punctuated by a brief bow of gratitude and a third yawn.

"Here's a cushion," Miyako said. "I think it used to be part of a Doom Buggy—how's that for coincidence?"

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"Kaichou. It's midnight."

Haruto would have thought that the speaker would place a higher priority on the earthquake than on the time, but as it turned out, it wasn't the ground shaking, it was him…because Kazumi was shaking him, gently, in order to wake him.

It took him another moment to remember why, exactly, Kazumi would be waking him, and why this would be happening at midnight. In the meantime, he pushed himself up on his forearms and sleepily wondered where he was, and Kazumi went over to the divan to repeat his performance with Mutsuki She had claimed the piece of furniture as her birthright by virtue of her sex and the fact that she would not hesitate to clobber anyone who disagreed with her…leaving the boys to scrape together a mismatched assortment of cushions and makeshift blankets, many of which were actually pieces of old, somewhat moth-eaten character costumes, and crash on the floor.

Mutsuki didn't take the awakening as well as Haruto. She reflexively smacked Kazumi on the head with her gohei, which was rather harsh considering he wasn't even possessed at the time. But eventually, all three of them were conscious enough to get back on track with the assignment. Madam Miyako obligingly opened the spirit-gate again, depositing them rather unceremoniously in front of the Haunted Mansion. They dusted themselves off, and spoke in unison.

"_Whoa._"

Now that the park's energy field was clear of the chaotic auras of thousands of tourists, there was no doubt but that there was something genuinely supernatural in there. Maybe several somethings, to judge from the strength of the spirit-presence. The façade alone was _seething_ with ethereal power. They could actually see the faint lights of hitodama in the windows. It didn't feel friendly, either. The whole of the Mansion radiated a vague sort of menace, like an invisible freezing mist composed of wriggling insects. It was all Haruto could do, especially with the recent primacy his Inner Child had held in his psyche, not to flee the scene screaming.

"Oh, dear…" said Madam Miyako. "It wasn't like that last night."

"I thought this was supposed to be a _small_ job!" Kazumi gulped.

"To be fair, no one actually used those words," Haruto pointed out.

"Well, now what?" asked Mutsuki. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I am _not_ going in there until we figure out what's going on."

"I'm with Asahina-sempai!" Kazumi hurriedly agreed.

Miyako sighed. "I've no idea what's gotten my uninvited guest so riled up, but it probably is rather dangerous in there just now. I can't in good conscience expect you three to continue. I'll just have to find some other way to get rid of the intruder."

"No," Haruto said, trying without effect to conceal the tremor in his voice. "This is our fault."

"_What?_" Mutsuki and Kazumi exploded, indignant.

"How do you figure that, duck?" asked Miyako.

"How long has the new ghost been here, exactly?" Haruto asked the lady spirit.

"Two weeks?" she guessed.

"And this is the first night anything like this has happened?" He pointed at the haunted Haunted Mansion as a horrendous sound emanated from within, arising like a demon legion and dying away like a mortal man's hope of survival in the face of such odds. He steadfastly ignored it, along with the frantic ixnay gestures coming from his cohorts.

"Well, yes, but I don't see why that makes it _your_ fault, duck."

"Don't you get it, Madam? This can't be a coincidence! Something specific must have happened to upset the ghost! And the most unusual thing to happen at this park today was us! We rode through the Haunted Mansion three times in a row, talking loudly about what we were here to do. It's like this because it knows we're going to attempt to drive it out. It's our fault. That means we have to fix it…_tonight_."

For a moment, there was total silence, except for some low-key wailing in the immediate vicinity of the Mansion.

"Kaichou," said Mutsuki. "This is one of those times when being responsible is way more trouble than it's worth."

"Then I'll handle it by myself!" Haruto snapped.

"I didn't say I wasn't in," the girl explained. "I just think we'll probably regret it before dawn."

"I'm already regretting it," Kazumi winced, glancing at the turbulent Mansion. "But a team's a team, right? And we don't want to risk your wrath again if we slack off!"

Haruto smiled. "Thanks, you two. Now let's tackle this. How bad can it be? I mean, we handled Yocho, right?"

"Right…" the other two agreed tentatively.

"Good luck, kids!" Madam Miyako cooed after them as they marched resolutely toward the tumultuous, ghost-infested Haunted Mansion.

Haruto wondered if the others had guessed how terrified he actually was. His childhood dread about the attraction was coming true in twisted detail, and he didn't even have the option of running away from it. On the contrary, he had to be the one leading the crusaders into battle. That unhappy thought was plenty to occupy him until they walked up to the Mansion's open gate and glanced off the empty space like golf balls off an extremely well-maintained trampoline. They toppled to the ground.

"Ow!" Haruto complained, pushing himself into a sitting position. "What's going on here?"

Kazumi got to his feet and inspected the glittering, semi-transparent wall that now stood in their way. Frowning, he whipped off his rosary and rattled off a short chant and a few mudras. "It's a spirit barrier," he determined. "Like one of mine, but much stronger. I don't think I can do anything about it."

"Stand aside, amateur!" Mutsuki said. "Let a real exorcist through to do some work." She pushed up the sleeve on her gohei arm, waved the sacred streamers to the right, left, and right again, and pulled back for a mighty Asahina Special Exorcism.

The barrier struck first, preemptively, lashing out with a burst of spirit-energy that threw Mutsuki flat on her back.

"Asahina-kun!" Haruto cried. "Sempai!" Kazumi joined in. They rushed to her side.

"Don't worry about me; I'm fine," she grumped, sitting up. "But I think this is going to take a lot more planning."

"Come to think of it," Kazumi mused, "didn't we need the help of the seven school spirits and then some to defeat Yocho?"

"Well, the school spirits aren't here," Haruto reminded them, as if they needed reminding. "We'll just have to think of something else."

"I might have some useful advice," said Madam Miyako, drifting closer to the Holy Student Council. They looked at her expectantly. "Haruto, duck, do you remember what I told you about the effect this park has on spirits?"

"It changes you to fit in with the Disney atmosphere," he remembered, "and that's why you discourage them from moving in."

"I can't convince them all," she explained. "Over time, there have been several spirits who have liked the idea of joining the Disney family as much as I. They still stay here, somewhere. Perhaps they can be of assistance to you."

"So where are they?" Mutsuki burst out, shoving her face as close to Madam Miyako's as she dared. "And why didn't you mention this sooner?"

"I don't know where you'll find them," the woman sniffed primly. "We don't interfere with each other's existences—live and let live, so to speak. That's also why I didn't mention them sooner. But if you find them and tell them their help is needed to defend their home, I'm sure they'll be amenable to the idea."

"You have a gift for understatement, Madam," said Mutsuki.

"If nothing else, looking for them will give us time to think of something else," Haruto decided.

A noise reminiscent of the roar of a thousand starving ogres bellowed out of the Haunted Mansion.

"Let's get out of here!" Kazumi suggested.

"I second the motion!" Mutsuki squeaked.

"Motion carries!" Haruto declared, and the three of them tore away from the Mansion and didn't stop running until they reached the drawbridge of the Castle.

"So now what?" asked Mutsuki.

"We'll search the entire park for those friendly spirits," Haruto said. "Now that the tourists are gone, it will be easier for us to sense the spirit-energy."

"We should split up," Kazumi suggested. "Even if it is easier, it could take hours unless we divide the work."

"Good idea," the president nodded. "Mutsuki, you check Adventureland and Westernland; Kazumi-kun, you search Critter Country and Fantasyland—but don't go near the Haunted Mansion—and I'll take Toontown, Tomorrowland, and the World Bazaar. Deal?"

"Deal!" they consented.

"For the honor of Saitou High!" Haruto crowed, thrusting his hand into the center of the triangle they made.

"For the sanctity of Disneyland!" Mutsuki cheered, adding her hand to his.

"Quack!" Kazumi quacked.

The other two looked over at him, otherwise frozen in place. Kazumi was trying to walk around while crouching, the result being that he was, well, waddling. He had his arms cocked in a position that ought not have been physiologically possible, and he periodically wagged his rear end rapidly.

"What's got him this time?" Haruto wondered.

"A duck, I think," Mutsuki replied. "Generations of them must have lived and died here by now; it's not unreasonable that a few would stick around."

Just then, Kazumi hopped up onto the bridge railing, waggled his butt, and made as if to jump off into the water.

"WAAGH!" Haruto and Mutsuki chorused in alarm.

"Asahina Special Exorcist Attack!" Mutsuki announced, bringing her gohei down on Kazumi's head for the second time since midnight. But this time, the blow was bolstered by the force of her ample heritage and training in Shinto spirituality. The duck-spirit zoomed out of Kazumi's body and took refuge in the moat, leaving him wobbling on the railing for a moment before he managed to fall backward onto the bridge.

"Ouch! Asahina-sempai, did you have to hit me so hard?"

"I felt cheated from not being able to hit that barrier earlier."

"Oh. Well, thanks then," he smiled. "What did I miss?"

"Nothing really," she told him. "Do you remember your assignment?"

"Fantasyland and Critter Country."

"Good," said Haruto. "Now let's go. We meet back here in an hour. Don't do _anything_ without the rest of us, even if you find some good prospects for help."

The other two nodded, and they were off to comb the park.

To Be Continued…


	6. Chapter 6: Locating the Cavalry

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction_ and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 6: Locating the Cavalry

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Disneyland never really slept. To turn off all the animatronics and other machinery at night, and then restart them in the morning, would actually consume more power than to let them run all night, so the park management took the latter option. But they turned down all the recorded sound, and many of the lights, and what illumination remained flashed strangely on the surfaces of the mechanical figures as they jerked and shuffled, silent save for pneumatic hisses and metal-on-plastic clicks, the whole of it coming together to make the situation terminally eerie…even without the nearby presence of a threatening ghost.

The polish on Haruto's crucifix was beginning to rub off from all the clutching it was getting.

Of course, it was his own fault for assigning himself to search Tomorrowland, where neon tubes, reflective surfaces, sparking Tesla coils, and other things suggestive of a mad scientist's laboratory abounded. But he had worked out the plan—on the fly, so he was proud of himself for thinking so quickly—to prevent the other two from searching lands where they might be too distracted by the theming. (Even though they were behaving more seriously than usual, there was no point in taking chances.) Thus, Mutsuki got the lands without any representations of cute little boys and Kazumi got the lands without any representations of sexy women. And Haruto gave himself more area to explore than either of the other two, so that if they did get moderately distracted, he wouldn't finish ahead of them. Efficiency, it was all about efficiency.

He had already scoured the World Bazaar, followed a trace of ghost presence, and found it to be Madam Miyako strolling down the imitation boulevard with a highly decorative parasol that was made of paper with lace edging. They exchanged a few words, but given that they had seen each other only minutes before, they hadn't much to say. Haruto moved on then to Tomorrowland. Surprisingly enough, he soon found another spirit trace, and began faithfully tracking it. That was when the scenery started to creep him out.

He nipped into a souvenir shop, hoping that racks of merchandise would take precedence over weird futuristic ambience inside, and it would be less spooky. He hoped in vain—Disney magic ensured that the racks of merchandise _were_ weird and futuristic, and to make matters worse, the lighting inside the store was almost nil. Haruto crashed into three displays, and stumbled over most of the items that were spilled as a consequence, before he managed to come to a sitting stop, leaning against what felt like the checkout counter. He paused there for a long moment, catching his breath and silently praying for forgiveness for some of the words he had just used.

Something glinted at the corner of his eye. He glanced up.

A tall, sinister figure stood there, staring down at him!

"Gyah!" he shrieked, scrambling backward.

The figure didn't move. It just stood, shining slightly in the dim light. It seemed to be wearing a floor-length robe. It was probably a statue of an alien or something, there for decoration.

Haruto's hand was resting on something uncomfortable, a small object, which must have been among the merchandise he knocked over. Glad for the distraction from looking at the tall scary thing, he picked it up and tried to determine what it was by touch. He felt a short length of fine chain, and a metal ring—oh, a souvenir keychain. The other end of it, the end that a tourist would buy it for, was roughly cylindrical and heavy for its size. Haruto felt a rubber button in the side, and pressed it. Light flared—a pocket-sized flashlight! Just the thing he needed!

He immediately pointed the beam at the thing that had startled him, and heaved a sigh of confirmed relief to discover that it was, indeed just a decoration: a Formica pillar with a small robot standing on it. It was definitely a Disney sort of robot, designed to look both functional and whimsical—about two feet tall, with a hinged metal jaw formed in a big, whimsical smile and droopy eyelids over its camera-shutter eyes. Its legs bent backwards, birdlike, and terminated in whimsically clumsy-looking disc-shaped feet. The wires linking its various parts were colored like a jumbo box of Crayolas and intentionally overlong, so they stuck out in whimsical loops; if it actually tried to walk, it would probably trip over its own connections.

In a way, it sort of reminded Haruto of someone.

He chuckled as he got to his feet and walked back over to the pillar. Now that he was standing, his head was about level with the robot's; it had only looked tall from the floor. "You really startled me," he told it with a little smile of relief and mild embarrassment.

"You really startled me, too, screaming like that," the robot replied.

There was only one way to respond to something like that: by screaming again, and running as fast as he could to the far corner of the store. The robot, for its part, screamed back, hopped down off the pillar, and ran in the opposite direction. Judging by the noises that ensued, it did in fact trip, if not over its wires than over the souvenirs scattered on the floor, and then fell apart, component pieces clattering on the tiles.

"Ack! My parts!" it lamented.

Haruto's brain jumped all the way from Outright Panicked to Bemusedly Intrigued, an abrupt shift of gears that locked up his mental transmission for a solid minute. When he finally regained his senses, he peeked out from behind the shelving unit where he had taken refuge.

"Haruo and Bones?" he whispered, disbelieving.

Various things stood between Haruto and the robot, blocking his line of sight, but he could hear it muttering to itself and clanking vaguely. "How cruel! How cruel! Oh, my poor parts! How ever will I get back together again?"

Curiosity won out over shock, and Haruto crept out from hiding and crossed the store, walking quietly so as not to alarm the robot-spirit any further. When he came in sight of it, it was a mess—limbs and gears and circuit boards scattered, joined only tenuously by the copious multihued wires, while the poor thing twitched on the floor, trying to reconcile the Catch-22 of pulling its arms in and reattaching them without any arms to do the pulling and reattaching.

"Er…" Haruto offered.

"It's you!" the robot accused. "What did I ever do to deserve you doing this to me?"

"I didn't _mean_ to," Haruto excused himself. "I just wasn't expecting you to, you know, start talking. Here—let me help you put yourself back together."

"You mortals are all alike. Treating me like a mere object! Does it ever occur to you that robots have feelings, too?"

"I'm sorry. I'm trying to make amends here. Where does this go?"

"How should I know? I can't see a thing from this position. Hey, is that one of my parts? You're serious about putting me back together?"

"Of course I am!" Haruto insisted. "It's sort of my fault this happened to you, right? Here, I think this is your arm. Does it join directly to your shoulder or is there a coupling of some sort?"

Over the next few minutes, Haruto helped the robot reassemble itself. When it was all together again, it heaved to its feet, bounced on its inverted knees a few times, and tested all its various joints. "I work!" it exulted. "You, sir, are a saint!"

"Um," Haruto said, not sure how to answer that.

"You're the first mortal who has ever been kind to me. Most of them never even take notice of me, except maybe to stick used bubble gum on me. My name is Nichi Akari, by the way." It extended its right hand, which was built with only three fingers.

"Uh…Haruto Houjo."

They shook hands. It was awkward, because of the difference in the size and number of fingers.

Haruto suddenly remembered his mission. He had found one of the resident spirits, now he had to solicit its help. He decided to ease into the topic.

"So…have you been here long?"

"Only the few minutes since I broke."

"That's not what I mean! I mean how long have you lived here in this…place…" He waved his hand around vaguely at the store specifically, Tomorrowland more generally, and Disneyland the most generally.

"At the park, you mean? Several years. But I've only been this robot for a few months. Before that, I was a fiberglass statue of Mickey Mouse in a spacesuit."

Haruto decided he was glad he was meeting Nichi now, and not a few months ago. That would have been just too weird. It was weird enough as it was, what with how similar the comical little spirit's behavior was to that of Haruo and Bones, even though there was only one of him. He suddenly suffered an absurd vision of Nichi trying to perform a Cossack dance on his backward-bending legs, and had to restrain a fit of laughter.

But it gave him a wisp of an idea. He had already been somewhat reminded of the Chairman by Madam Miyako, and Nichi seemed to be a clear equivalent to Haruo Sato and "Bones" Suzuki, the peculiar anatomical-model-and-skeleton team who were more irritating than helpful, but part of the package deal. Maybe the other sympathetic spirits in residence at Disneyland were also counterparts of sorts to the Seven Wonders…and if so, then maybe, _maybe_ he could summon them through the badges.

"Nichi, can I ask you a random sort of question?" he asked the haunted automaton.

"Of course! Anything for the kind man who helped fix me!"

"Does this mean anything to you?" He pointed to the iridescent greenish-black badge at the bottommost point of the arrangement on his costume.

Nichi hobbled over for a closer look. "Well, I'll be!" he squawked. "That's a spirit-summoning badge!"

"Yes," Haruto agreed. "All seven of them are."

"Why, to be entrusted with those, you must be a great friend to spirits everywhere!"

"Er…sort of. I'm the president of the Holy Student Council at Saitou High School. Listen, Nichi, the rest of the Council and I are trying to get rid of a ghost that's moved in here against Madam Miyako's wishes. But it's resisting us very, um, strongly. Madam Miyako suggested that we get some help from you cooperative spirits. If I tried to use this badge to summon you, would it work? Would you hear the call?"

"You better believe I would! I'd do anything for you, Houjo-san! But don't jump to conclusions just because of what Madam Miyako says. She thinks she knows what's best for us all. She tried to convince me to leave at first, even though I was perfectly happy from the start."

"Oh. I guess we'll have to look into it some more. But it's good to know I can count on you if push comes to shove. I'm going to leave you to your own devices now, but be prepared to be summoned later tonight."

"Yes, sir!" Nichi said with a salute so snappy that his hand flew off. "Ack! My hand!"

Haruto left the little robot to retrieve the appendage on his own and hurried to find Mutuski and Kazumi. The allotted hour wasn't close to being up yet, but they had to hear about this.

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Kazumi knew that he was up for a time-consuming trial-and-error operation. "Search Critter Country and Fantasyland", Haruto had said. Well, with the Haunted Mansion boiling over with ghost activity right near the border between the two areas, finding any other spirits in the vicinity by sensing their energy would be like spotting katydids on a mulberry tree. He was going to have to inspect every leaf, a prospect he did not relish. He decided it would be best if he started with Critter Country, which was much smaller than Fantasyland. That way, he stood a better chance of being able to say that he had finished searching an entire land, even if the actual area he was able to cover was the same as if he had started with Fantasyland.

But then there was the problem of following the other half of the instructions: "don't go near the Haunted Mansion." Haruto had apparently overlooked that in order to get into Critter Country, one _had_ to go near the Haunted Mansion, because the Mansion was located right next to Critter Country's only entrance. Kazumi could not justly be called a fearful person, but he knew that if he got too close to the hostile spirits and wound up missing the rendezvous because a pack of them decided to get some jollies by using his body to play Flesh Tag, he would catch no end of hell from Haruto and Mutsuki.

On the other hand, he did care (for once) about making a sincere effort and doing a genuinely good job. He had suggested splitting up because he had hoped that, if he got something useful done all on his own, he would score points with the other two Council members, and with the Chairman, and would stand a good chance of being rewarded with the _Toilet Hanako Magazine_ Barely-There-Wear Special Swimsuit Edition that he had had been dropping broad hints about lately.

Thus, Kazumi spent a good ten or fifteen minutes staring at the Haunted Mansion from the general proximity of Dumbo the Flying Elephant, which he judged to be at a safe distance, and tried to figure out whether he could pass it safely. Finally he realized that he certainly wasn't going to get anything done just standing there, so he screwed up his resolve, stood straight, and made a lightning dash for Critter Country, gazing straight ahead all the while so that he would not have to look at the thing he was avoiding. He knew that the best way to antagonize angry spirits—or angry just about anything for that matter—was to let them know you knew they were there.

When he paused to catch his breath, he was surrounded by backwoodsy theming, the Haunted Mansion was safely behind him, still muttering to itself, and nothing adverse had happened. Kazumi relaxed and set his mind to finding a friendly spirit. It would have helped if he had had the foggiest idea what to look for.

Bereft of good ideas, Kazumi just sort of picked his way around Critter Country, checking out the faked-up log buildings and the enormous concrete hillock known as Splash Mountain (the area's only popular ride) and _really_ wishing that the Haunted Mansion wasn't emitting so much background static, because it was really hurting his efficiency. After he had made one circuit without discovering anything of import, he sat down against a large pine tree to collect his thoughts.

For a pine tree, it was very soft. And warm. And the bark was awfully…stringy. And it smelled funny, almost like a dog.

But it wasn't until it moved away from his back that he really internalized the fact that it wasn't a pine tree at all.

With a squawk of amazement, Kazumi scrambled away and gawked up at the thing he had been leaning against. It was actually a leg: a huge, thick, shaggy leg that, when he really craned his head, turned out to be attached to a colossally huge bear, ten meters tall if it was an inch, standing upright and wearing a cheap-looking vest and a natty straw hat.

The bear shuffled, turned, and looked down, noticing Kazumi. Its face was somewhat cartoonish, with the upper canine teeth protruding over a comically weak chin.

"Gruuh?" it said, sounding confused.

There was only one way for an expert ghost-hunter like Kazumi to respond to a clear challenge like that. He passed out cold from shock.

He came to a moment later somewhere in the steaming jungles of Southeast Asia. That's what he thought at first, anyway, from the hot, moist, smelly air that was puffing against his face. Then he opened his eyes and realized that the giant bear was bent over on all fours and sniffing him. Its nose alone was the size of a holiday turkey.

"Yeeecccccchhhh!" he evaluated the situation, scooting away backward.

"Gruuh?" the bear asked again, helpfully. There was a semi-human quality to its voice.

"Please don't eat me!" Kazumi whimpered.

"Gruuh!" the bear roared. If Kazumi had been calmer, he might have noticed that the beast's tone held indignation and a hint of hurt feelings. But in his current petrified state, all he noticed was the volume, and he did his level best to match it with his own shriek.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Kazumi screeched.

"GRRRRAAAAAARRRRHHHHHHH!" the bear responded, rearing up in alarm, tripping over its own hind paws, and falling to the ground with a force that made the earth shake for several seconds. Kazumi continued screaming for nearly a minute after that, but he finally realized that he was the only one making any significant noise anymore, and trailed off.

The bear was sniffling quietly and holding one of its sofa-sized feet.

"Uh…are you okay?" Kazumi asked.

"Gruuh!" the bear sobbed. Kazumi took this to mean "I hurt my foot," but he didn't have any specifically relevant help to offer, so he just sat in awkward silence.

"Hello…?" a third voice called from the middle distance. "Ursus, honey, what happened?"

It was a female voice, and it sounded cute. Kazumi immediately hopped to his feet and tried to radiate suave competence. That went right out the window when the speaker came around the corner from the direction of Fantasyland and looked in his direction.

She was cute, all right—easily as attractive as any Toilet Hanako he had ever encountered. Her honey-blond hair cascaded in fluffy waves down her back, her large eyes sparkled in the faint light of the moon and stars, her pert bow lips would have held an expression of unmitigated pleasantness if they had not been pursed with concern for the huge bear's discomfort. The style of her dress was reminiscent of Fairy Tale Days of Yore, but with a more daring neckline and hemline than one would usually associate with an old-fashioned innocent maiden. She walked, as though weightless, on the very tips of her toes.

All Kazumi's thoughts of impressing her were immediate lost in the tsunami of sheer adolescent lust that swamped his brain at the sight of her. "Wooowwwwww…" he drooled.

The girl, for her part, ignored him completely and hurried over to the still blubbering bear. "Oh!" she cried sympathetically. "Did you fall down again?"

"Grruuuuhhhhhhhh!"

Now she noticed Kazumi. "What did you do to Ursus Major?" she demanded petulantly.

"What do you want me to have done to him?" Kazumi asked dreamily.

"Hey, I'm serious! You scared him half to life!"

"Well, he sort of attacked me…but it's okay if he's _your_ friend."

"Attacked you? That's preposterous! Ursus wouldn't hurt a flea!"

"GRRUUUUHHHHHHHH!"

"Hey, now, stop that," the girl scolded the bear affectionately. "I just looked at your foot and there's not a thing wrong with it. You're making a big fuss over nothing."

Over the course of the next minute or so, the giant beast's tirade petered out, and after another couple of minutes, Kazumi's ears stopped ringing. He shook his head to clear it.

"Now," the girl said to him sternly, "I have to ask you to leave. It's after hours, you know."

"You don't understand, I have permission to be here," he replied, being careful not to look directly at her so as to avoid being enthralled again. "From Madam Miyako."

"Oh, well, that's different! Allow me to introduce myself. They call me Princess Hanako."

"You're a Miss Hanako!"

"Does that surprise you?"

"I guess not. But why _Princess_ Hanako?"

"It just seems to be the natural niche for a spirit of my type in a place like this, what with all those famous Disney Princesses. Two of them are even named after flowers."

"You have to help us!" Kazumi insisted. "I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a ghost in the Haunted Mansion—a real one—a bad one. We—the Holy Student Council—we're supposed to stop it, but it's gotten beyond us. We need help from the local friendly spirits if we're going to succeed…and now that I've met you, Princess Hanako, I _have_ to succeed! For the sake of Miss Hanakos everywhere!"

"So that's what's going on over there! Of course I'll help!" Princess Hanako declared with all the spunk and verve of a standard contemporary Disney heroine. "Fantasyland is my own personal territory!" She addressed the bear. "What do you say, Ursus Major?"

Ursus Major was silent for a long moment, looking back and forth between Kazumi and Hanako. Kazumi grasped that the enormous beast would be a tremendous asset if they could gain its cooperation, and sensed that it was reluctant to work with him because of the recent fiasco.

"I'm sorry I made you trip and fall, Bear-san," he said with a self-effacing bow, even though he didn't think he was really at fault. "I would be honored if you would lend your assistance in this endeavor."

Ursus still seemed reticent. Princess Hanako leaned over and whispered to Kazumi (sending shivers running up and down every nerve ending in his body), "He's really a big coward. You have to promise him he won't get hurt."

"But I don't know if I can make that promise," Kazumi didn't say on account of the fact that every single one of his brain cells that was not urgently needed for tasks such as heartbeat and respiration was involved in relishing his closeness to the princess. What came out instead was more along the lines of "Hwaaaaaahhhhhhh…"

"Please, Ursus? For me?" Hanako said, batting her eyelashes sweetly. Kazumi could swear that Ursus Major blushed; then the huge shaggy head made a single nod.

"Thank you so much!" Kazumi said, bowing again. "Both of you, get ready for a major battle later on. I have to go let the rest of the Council know that I found you!" Then he turned on his heels and dashed back toward Fantasyland, preparing to search out his companions if necessary. The hour was far from over yet, but news like this couldn't wait.

He was very surprised when he reached the three-way intersection between Critter Country, Fantasyland, and Westernland, and met up with Mutsuki, running to find _him_.

"Sempai!" he hollered at her.

"Kazumi-kun!" she hollered back.

"You won't believe what I found!" they hollered in unison.

"You go first," said Kazumi out of deference to her seniority.

"I found some help for us!" she burst out without missing a beat. "But you won't believe this—he's just like Red Mantle! Only he's called Red Buffalo Cape. He's an Indian—you know, like an American Indian. I met him in Westernland. But he even has war paint around his eyes like Red Mantle's mask! And he asked me whether I wanted a red buffalo cape or a blue buffalo cape and everything!"

"No kidding?"

"No kidding!"

"You're really not going to believe this—I met a Miss Hanako! Only she's called Princess Hanako because she's like a generic Disney Princess. And she's really gorgeous and sweet and I think I'm in love!"

"That is _so cool_!" Mutsuki gushed. "But I guess it's not so unusual. There are toilet ghosts everywhere."

"But that's not all! There was also this bear—this freaking huge bear! And it didn't talk! Not that bears normally should talk, but this one was wearing some clothes, so I thought at first that it might talk, but it didn't, it just sort of growled and roared."

"Sounds like Giant," Mutsuki observed.

"Hey, you're right! I never thought of that!"

"Kazumi-kun, do you realize what this means? There could be counterparts to _all_ the school spirits here! That must be the help Madam Miyako meant us to find!"

"We have to tell Kaichou!"

"Let's hurry up and find him!"

They took off again, racing through Fantasyland toward the Castle. As they passed underneath the archway and onto the drawbridge, they were not entirely surprised to see Haruto approaching at high speed from the opposite direction. What followed was essentially a repeat of the same exchange which Mutsuki and Kazumi had just completed. It seemed logical indeed to conclude that Disneyland had in residence a complete set of spirits complementing the Seven Wonders of Saitou High. All that remained, then, was to find the other three.

"And I think I know where to look," said Haruto, unfolding his guide map. "There are seven themed areas in Disneyland. So far, we've searched four of them, and found one prominent spirit for each. How much do you want to bet that each of the other three also has a spirit? Seven lands, seven spirits. It makes perfect sense!"

"Great!" Mutsuki crowed. "Let's get going! I can't wait to meet the counterpart to my little Nino-kun!"

And so once again, they were off—as a group this time.

To Be Continued…

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_A/N: The names of the Disneyland spirits are, as you might have guessed, significant. In the grand anime tradition, most of them are puns._

_Hanako translates as "flower child," hence Princess Hanako's reference to Disney Princesses named after flowers. The two Princesses in question are, of course, Jasmine from _Aladdin _and Briar Rose (better known as Aurora) from _Sleeping Beauty_. Technically, there is a third Princess named after a flower—Tiger Lily from _Peter Pan_, but as she is not included on the traditional roster of Disney Princesses, I didn't count her. And, lest I forget, Mulan's name means "magnolia" in Chinese…but she also is not usually considered a Princess._

_Ursus Major means "great bear" in Latin. Yes, I know the constellation is _Ursa_ Major, but the constellation is supposed to be of a female bear, while Ursus is a dude._

_Nichi Akari is the one I'm really proud of, because it's a _bilingual_ pun. It's based on alternate pronunciations for the two kanji in the Japanese word for "tomorrow," _ashita._ In effect, the character is named Tom Morrow…which Disneyland devotees will recognize as the name of the flamboyant audio-animatronic host of the Innoventions attraction. Hardcore Disneyland devotees also know that the same name was used for the host of the long-extinct Flight to the Moon attraction, and really observant folks have heard him paged in the queue of Star Tours. It's a long, proud, and corny Disneyland tradition that I'm pleased to carry on in my own way._

—_Karalora_


	7. Chapter 7: Horrors!

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence:_ Haunted Junction _and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Part 7: Horrors!

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In the pseudo-jungles of Adventureland, they met Chibi Maui, an animated statue of an ancient Polynesian god-hero…in his childhood. As a mere statue, he was not very appealing to look at due to the highly stylized design of ancient Polynesian cultural art—but animated, he was much cuter, to Mutsuki's delight. Unfortunately for everyone involved apart from Mutsuki, he wore nothing more than a sort of skirt made of palm leaves and some tribal-looking ornaments and tattoos, but once Haruto and Kazumi managed to pry her off the boy spirit, they were able to ascertain his powers, which were fairly impressive. He carried a magical net that held a brilliantly shining orb. It was the sun, or so he claimed.

"What is it really?" Kazumi asked naively. "I mean, that's not the _real_ sun, is it?"

"You don't see any other sun around, do you?" the spirit challenged him.

"Of course not; it's night time."

"Well, where did you think the sun went at night?" And by that point Kazumi was so confused—indeed, all three of them were—that they could not come up with a decent argument.

And in the loony faux-metropolis of Toontown, they discovered Yuga-Yuga, who like their own Mirror Girl lived in a mirror. Yuga-Yuga's residence, however, was a funhouse mirror, and even those parts of the young ghost that emerged from the mirror tended to be wavy and distorted. Perhaps as a result of this, he or she (they weren't quite sure which) was much more boisterous and silly than Mirror Girl, and had a tendency to talk like an American cartoon character of the "wacky" type.

"That leaves just one more," said Kazumi. "But Kaichou, didn't you already search the World Bazaar?"

"Yes, and the only spirit I found there was Madam Miyako. But if she had any ability to help us, she would have offered it already, wouldn't she?"

"Maybe," Mutsuki mused. "But on the other hand, she is a lot like Chairman in some ways, isn't she?"

"Did I hear my name?" Miyako said, appearing approximately five centimeters in front of Haruto's nose.

"Like that, for instance," Mutsuki continued calmly while Haruto quietly had a private cardiac episode.

"Hi, Madam Miyako!" Kazumi greeted the lady ghost brightly. "We found some of those friendly spirits you mentioned. But we're still short one. Can you fill in?" He was totally unabashed.

Miyako blinked and coyly fanned herself. "Just what sort of help do you think I could offer?"

"We don't know yet," Mutsuki admitted, "but we need you to round out the team."

"What team?"

"The friendly spirits we found," Haruto explained, having recovered from his shock, "are very similar to the school spirits we're used to working with. All we lack is a counterpart to the Chairman, and…well, forgive me for saying so, but you remind us a lot of him."

"I remind you of Tatsugoro?" Miyako tittered. "How charming! How can I refuse a request so prettily phrased? Count me in, ducks! When do we start?"

"Right now, I guess," said Haruto. "We three will go to the Haunted Mansion, see if anything has changed, and call you as soon as we need you. Until then, just…do whatever it was you were doing before."

"Anything you say, duck. You're the boss—for now, at least." With a puff of ethereal smoke, she was gone.

"Well…are we ready?" Haruto asked the others.

"Ready!" they replied in tandem.

"Good," said the president. Then he fell silent as they headed for the Haunted Mansion for the third (and hopefully final) time. In the darkness, Kazumi and Mutsuki didn't notice that their leader was trembling.

Surprisingly, the Mansion was quiescent when they arrived. There was no way to tell whether it was because the ghost had calmed down, or because it was laying an ambush for them. They discussed these and other possibilities at some length before making the decision to go in, come what may.

"We have to investigate in any case," Haruto said, bravely concealing the tremor in his voice. "We knew the dangers when we put on the uniform."

"But Kaichou, we don't wear a uniform," said Kazumi. "And aren't you always trying to quit the Holy Student Council?"

"Besides," Mutsuki went on, ignoring her junior, "we don't know how long this is going to take. I think the first shift of employees comes in around five a.m. If they catch us here, I don't want to think about what they'll do to us! They'll probably make me wear the Pluto costume to work off my crime, and as much as I'd love an excuse to lick cute little boys, I want it to be with my own—"

"DON'T FINISH THAT SENTENCE!" Haruto bellowed. "Let's just get this over with…I mean, get going inside."

"Hey, Kaichou, are you okay? You sound scared," Mustuki observed.

"I'm fine," he dismissed the issue, even though his Inner Child was riding high again, reminding him just how scary and threatening the attraction was. If his childhood horror was ever to come true, now would be the time. And indeed, it seemed that might prove to be the case. As the Council passed between the two griffin statues, every nerve on edge, it seemed to Haruto—who kept his gaze fixed steadily ahead, not looking directly at them—that they turned their heads, ever so slightly, to follow the trio's progress, and that their glowing eyes flared just a bit.

They entered the lobby to find the sliding doors to both stretching rooms open. That seemed ominous at first, but as Kazumi pointed out, "Maybe they leave them that way at night."

"Do you think we'll be able to get through that way?" Haruto wondered. "Maybe we should find an employee access door or something."

"When hinges creak in doorless chambers," the sound system said, "and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls…"

"Yeah, yeah, we know the drill," Mustuki snapped, glancing around for any inconspicuous doors with signs reading "Servants' Quarters" (the themed equivalent of "Employees Only").

The recording was not fazed. "…whenever candle lights flicker where the air is deathly still…that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight."

"If they leave that on at night," Kazumi figured, "maybe the stretching room is working. I think we should try it. The worst thing that can happen is nothing, right?" Actually, under the present circumstances, that wasn't quite true, but none of them saw fit to ponder that just at the moment.

They entered the room.

"Welcome, foolish mortals, to the Haunted Mansion. I am your host: your 'Ghost Host.' Kindly step all the way in, please, and make room for everyone. There's no turning back now!" An eerie chuckle emanated from the speakers as the doors slid closed in near-silence.

"Does the Ghost Host sound a little…different to you?" said Mutsuki.

"Please don't say that," Haruto winced.

"Out tour begins here in this gallery, where you see paintings of some of our guests as they appeared in their corruptible mortal state," the Ghost Host explained, putting a delicate emphasis on the word "mortal". The ceiling began to ascend.

"Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding…almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually _stretching_? Or is it your imagination, hmm? And consider this dismaying observation—this chamber has _no windows, and no doors_…" A thin yet smug snicker. "…which offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out!" Mad cackling. "Of course, there's always _my_ way."

Down went the lights, up came the lightning, and then the room was plunged into total darkness. A cheesy recorded scream announced the supposed fall of the hanging skeleton, as per normal…but it was not followed by the cheesy recording of the skeleton supposedly shattering on the floor that they all expected. Instead, it was followed by the very real sound of a very real skeleton very really shattering on the floor. They felt the wind of its passing an instant before it landed, jumped backward in the darkness to avoid being pelted by needle-sharp shards of bone.

After that, no one spoke for several long moments. The room remained completely dark, the doors closed. The only sound was a three-part harmony of shocked panting.

Finally, Kazumi grew brave enough to speak up. "What just happened?" he said in a small voice.

The lights came up, brighter than they should have been, just long enough to let the Holy Student Council see, on the floor of the gallery, a half-scattered heap of dry bones and once-fine rags boil away into vapor. Then every light bulb in the room popped simultaneously, releasing showers of sparks that fortunately faded before they landed. Then it was dark again.

"So," said Mutsuki, determined not to let herself be thrown again, "who wants to have a go at forcing the doors?"

This proved to be unnecessary; the doors opened of their own accord almost as soon as she finished speaking. What they opened onto was the old familiar hallway of transforming portraits (achieved via alternating projections) that led to the load area, but with a very _un_familiar atmosphere—actually ghastly, rather than just pretend-ghastly. Ordinarily, the paintings changed from pleasant, friendly images to mildly spooky ones—an Egyptian princess metamorphosed into a sinister panther-woman, a noble sailing ship became a staggering wreck tossed about on storm waves—but now, _now_ the altered images resembled scenes from the fertile imagination of Hollywood horror writers. The princess' feline features twisted, becoming semi-reptilian; her slavering jaws gnashed before their unbelieving eyes. The derelict ship became a demon vessel with gnawed bones for timbers and stitched-together human skins for sails, heaving on a sea of blood. To make matters worse, the new images seemed, when seen out of the corner of the eye, to emerge partly from the canvas, only to dart back within the boundaries of the frames when looked at directly.

"Yeah…that ghost is definitely making its presence known," Mutsuki observed, while Kazumi nervously fumbled for the ink brush he used to create spirit wards, and Haruto gripped his crucifix until it _bent_.

"You know, I bet the Imagineers wouldn't like their special effects being tampered with like this," Kazumi said.

"Guys," said Haruto, unable to disguise the quaver in his speech any longer, "I just want you to know that the time I've spent with you hasn't been as bad as I've made it out to be, and whatever happens in here—"

"Kaichou!" Mustuki chided him sharply. "We'll be fine, okay? The reason it's working so hard to scare us is that it doesn't want a confrontation. It's more afraid of us than we are of it."

"Asahina-sempai, I think you're thinking of wild animals," Kazumi interjected.

"_Regardless_, very few ghosts can actually hurt people physically."

"It tried to drop a skeleton on us! Call me alarmist, but I'm willing to bet that would have hurt if we hadn't moved!"

"Okay, so maybe there is some real danger here! But it won't help matters if you get into the mindset that we're going to die, and it _especially_ won't help matters if you make a big melodramatic speech about it and get _me_ all nervous!"

Haruto was silent for a second, mulling over her words. "Asahina-kun…" he said softly. "So you admit you're nervous too?"

"Did I say that? I must have been thinking about something else. Let's move on, shall we?" She hurried ahead without waiting for an answer.

"She acts tough," Kazumi smiled, "but she's actually like a real girl sometimes."

"_I heard that!_"

"Let's move on, shall we?" Haruto repeated.

The boys caught up with their temperamental comrade, who was just reaching the end of the hallway and about to make the right turn onto the candelabra-flanked walkway that led to the Doom Buggy track. It, too, had been altered under the ghost's ministrations. The artificial cobwebs that always hung from the chandeliers had greatly increased in size and scope, taking the form of thick sheets that even draped across the walkway in places, forcing the Holy Student Council to push through them. They tore with a spine-chilling sound like fabric ripping quietly, and flashes of movement overhead proved to be cat-sized spiders scuttling away from the disturbance to the safety of the shadowed ceiling. Mutsuki, in an uncharacteristic bout of behaving "like a real girl", whimpered and skootched closer to the boys.

The Doom Buggies themselves appeared unchanged, but the beleaguered Council members didn't trust the appearance. Instead of climbing into one of them as they were clearly meant to do, they walked alongside the track at approximately the same speed, single-file, determined and defiant.

"And this way," Haruto noted, "we'll be able to go anywhere we want within the building."

"Is there anywhere we _want_ to go?" Kazumi wondered as a hitodama with a hideous face swooped over them.

"Better make that anywhere we _need_ to go," Mutsuki recommended, grimacing.

"Good point," Haruto conceded with an identical grimace.

They quickly discovered two things. Firstly, there was a downside to walking rather than riding, which was that there was no barrier of space between them and the ghoulish alterations to the Mansion. They noticed quickly enough that the freakish display pretended to be part of the normal show; that is, it stayed a safe distance from the Doom Buggies at all times. But they weren't in a Doom Buggy, and it was too late to fix that now that the safety bars were all lowered. The second thing they discovered, which fortunately outweighed the first, was that there was much, much more to the Haunted Mansion than any of them had suspected.

And so much of that hidden side to the attraction was right out in the open! In plain sight, yet invisible to the riders, because of the high curving shells of the Doom Buggies, turning and tilting on the track to keep the guests' view always pointed in the proper direction. Many of the means by which the marvelous effects were created were laid bare to the eye when that eye had complete freedom to glance in any direction around the rooms and hallways. There, too, were numerous access doors for the use of employees only, clearly marked and standing out bizarrely in the midst of the theming. It was weird. It was enthralling. They hoped it wouldn't spoil the ride for them in the future.

First they simply followed the track through one complete course, feeling an odd mixture of fascination, unease, privilege, and outright dread at the sight of the animatronics with the soundtrack turned off, overlaid with the horror spectacle created by the real ghost they were there to confront. When you never knew whether a gruesome specter leaping up just to your left was merely a hydraulic figure or a genuine supernatural apparition, it made the former a lot more startling. Even the blank stretches—those areas that had no need for fake frights because no guest would ever see them during the course of the ride—had been filled in with blood oozing from the walls, anemic lights in unnatural shades of green and blue, grimacing faces that disappeared when noticed, vague shadows of grasping claws, half-audible moans and cries, and immaterially cold fingers that caressed spines and brows.

But the ghost itself utterly failed to make an overt appearance. If one of the wailing banshees that descended from the ceiling, or the giant rats that scuttled behind the draperies and offered only fleeting glimpses of their snake-tails and lizard-feet, or any of the multitude of _non-Disney-approved_ phantoms that had been added to the attraction, was actually their authentic ghost host in disguise, it didn't bother to introduce itself.

"Grrrr…if we don't _do_ something soon, I'm gonna scream!" Mutsuki screamed petulantly, in order to keep herself from screaming with fear.

"Sempai, you are screaming," Kazumi pointed out.

"You think I don't know that?"

"Calm down!" Haruto ordered her. "Listen, we haven't tried any of those employee access doors yet. Let's see what we can find there. Actually, I really want to get down into the Ballroom."

The Ballroom was an immense set, the high point of the ride (in more ways than one). It was literally large enough to serve as a real ballroom, three stories high and twice as long. The Doom Buggies passed along a balcony about midway up one wall, so that the riders could look down on the festivities being enjoyed by the native ghosts of the Mansion. How the Imagineers managed to project the translucent partygoers into the room, and make them appear and disappear from view, was one of the attraction's most sought-after secrets. Most people figured on holograms. Haruto's desire to investigate the set was mostly related to the mission, and partly to indulge his own curiosity about the special effects.

Most of the doors led nowhere very interesting. An employee break room, a few bare hallways that merely debouched back onto the trackway, to allow Cast Members to move about the Mansion without being seen by the guests, a maintenance shed, a few doors that were locked. The ghost had left these "behind-the-scenes" areas alone, and the Holy Student Council didn't pay much attention to them.

They discovered the door they wanted in the Séance Room, where a crystal ball on a levitating table contained the disembodied, wild-haired head of a middle-aged woman (identified by the narration as Madam Leota), chanting an invocation to the spirits in an elegantly creepy voice, while diverse musical instruments spun and bobbed overhead. Ordinarily, the mood in the room was one of understated cacophony, the instruments playing erratically in response to Leota's directives, but with the audio turned off, it was quite silent…except, that is, for the constant murmur and rustle with which their quarry had seen fit to enhance the scene. The door was cleverly disguised as a tall, narrow cabinet resting on the floor. Perhaps the riders were meant to assume that it contained magic potions and such. It was only due to a whim of Kazumi's that they found the door at all.

They were passing through the Séance Room on their way to the Ballroom overlook when Kazumi's generic youthful curiosity was piqued, and without consulting the other two, he hopped the railing, fell because his baggy layered robes snagged on a post, picked himself up while cursing softly, and then maneuvered around the crowded display to the cabinet and started messing with the handles.

"Kazumi-kun, what are you doing?" asked Haruto.

"Just looking around. Hey, it's a door!" was the younger boy's reply.

That was all Haruto and Mutsuki needed to be convinced to follow their impulsive comrade. They climbed more carefully over the railing than he had, but that didn't stop Haruto from getting his feet tangled in the bars and making a rather less than graceful landing on the other side.

"Jeez, boys are clumsy," Mustuki commented, standing over her fallen president.

"I'm fine, thanks for your concern," he replied acidly. Then they stopped screwing around and took a look inside the cabinet.

It opened onto a plain access corridor that sloped sharply downward, widening toward the end. Vague shapes could be seen moving about in the space beyond, scarcely visible in the dim light. With a certain amount of trepidation, the Holy Student Council snuck forward, expecting at any moment to meet yet another of the wayward ghost's depraved inventions…until they realized what it was they were looking at.

"The party guests," Mutsuki recognized the figures, which were themselves static but attached to a track in the floor that moved them rapidly in a rough circle. About one quarter of the circle was illuminated from above, so that the mannequins alternately brightened and darkened as the motion carried them in and out of the range of the light. Beyond them were numerous animatronic men and women sitting in plain black chairs that were almost invisible in the semi-darkness. They moved repetitively and somewhat jerkily, fading in and out of high visibility as the lighting on them faded on and off. All of the figures were dressed in old-fashioned clothes, and all were painted in pale pastels, their facial features exaggerated with harsh lines.

"Wow, look at _that_!" Kazumi goggled, pointing past the entire panoply of eerie mannequins. Haruto and Mutsuki followed his finger and realized that they were staring into the Ballroom itself. Despite the unfamiliar perspective from the floor rather than halfway up a wall, it was exactly the same as they always knew it, even to the semi-transparent figures of partygoers, which were _exact mirror images_ of the solid figures that surrounded them, appearing as the animatronics were illuminated, vanishing as the lights went down.

It took them a few moments to realize that there was in fact an immense sheet of glass between themselves and the actual Ballroom set, thinly reflecting the animatronics to give the appearance of ghostly dancers and diners. The illusion had nothing to do with holograms at all. Realizing that, they could appreciate why the mannequins were so severely painted—so that their clothes and expressions would show up in the wan reflections.

"So that's how they do it!" Haruto concluded as though making a brilliant deduction.

Exploring along the gigantic pane, they found where it ended, well off to one side, and slipped around onto the Ballroom set itself. From that point of view, it was richly furnished but bizarrely deserted, the only movements coming from a motorized rocking chair near a hearth containing a greenish cellophane fire, and a robotic raven perched on a balcony ledge on the far wall. Standing back, well away from the glass, they got a full view of the section of the Doom Buggies' route that passed the Ballroom, and the clusters of physical animatronics that gamboled not only below, but above and to the sides of the track.

"Amazing," said Haruto, feeling an immense weight lift from his soul. It was so _simple_! His childhood fears vanished like so many snowflakes in a warm oven, and he suddenly realized why they had remained, lurking in the dark recesses of his psyche, for so long. He had always known that the Ballroom ghosts were not real ghosts, but he had assumed that they were something equally mysterious, like holograms, and that was no better—because the entire reason the supernatural is frightening is that it _is_ mysterious. But reflections in glass…why, anyone could replicate that at home with nothing more than a clean window and a flashlight!

Mutsuki and Kazumi cleared their throats loudly. "Don't we have an assignment to complete, oh-so-diligent Kaichou?" the former accused him.

"Uh…yes," he confessed, rubbing the back of his head with embarrassment.

"You know," said Kazumi with a sudden soberness, "something seems to be missing here."

A heavy black fog suddenly swirled into the room from nowhere, smelling of burning dust and damp leaves. It was accompanied by a low, throaty chuckling sound and the feeling that things were about to get scary on a whole new level.

"There, that's it," Kazumi smiled. "I was wondering when the ghost was going to start messing with stuff again."

Meanwhile, visibility in the room was rapidly deteriorating, due in no small part to the fact that the lights had begun to flicker. "Be ready for anything," Haruto told the others, even though he knew that this is unhelpful advice at the best of times, let alone when an attack from a riled-up phantom is imminent.

"We have nine-hundred and ninety-nine happy haunts here," a demonic voice growled, seeming to come from every part of the black mist at once, "but there's room for a thousand. Any volunteers?" The words were straight out of the attraction narration, but the voice was not remotely like the Ghost Host recording. It was the kind of voice that no live person could imitate without some kind of electronic distortion enhancement, plunging deep into the sub-bass register without losing the strangled quality that would normally be associated with a much higher pitch, reverberating as though it emanated from within a metal cave. The three brave exorcists, standing close together in space but effectively isolated by the soupy darkness, began to feel uncontrollably nervous.

Mutsuki's danger sense blared a warning just as something pounced upon her, knocked her to the floor, and pinned her there, holding her gohei arm in a ferocious and paralyzing grip. It didn't seem to be much bigger than she was, but it was quite a bit stronger, and it slavered and hissed like a pugnacious beast. Its luminous red eyes leered at her. Then the haze parted just enough for her to make out Kazumi's madly grinning features. He had been possessed but good this time!

"Kaichou!" she called out plaintively.

"Asahina-kun?" Haruto's frightened voice came back.

"This lunkhead's possessed again! Get him off me!"

"Where are you?"

"Over here! Follow my voice!"

He quickly found his bearings and came to her rescue. Kazumi's physical strength was enhanced by the possessing influence so that he was more powerful than either of them, but not both of them at once, and they were able to pry him away from Mustuki. He immediately turned on Haruto, swiping at him with newly elongated and sharpened fingernails. Haruto barely dodged in time to avoid being laid open like an overripe tomato. A chase ensued, during which Haruto was at a severe disadvantage due to the near-complete darkness of the room and the dilapidated antique furniture strewn about. Apparently, whatever was possessing Kazumi could see in the dark.

"AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!" Haruto squawked, careening around the Ballroom with Kazumi close on his heels. "Asahina-kun, _do_ something!"

"What do you want me to do?" she demanded. "I can't even see you from over here!"

"I don't know! Just think of something before Kazumi turns me into confetti!"

"What's wrong with you, Kaichou? Don't you know anything about fighting?"

"No! I'm a pacifist!"

"Since when? You never mentioned any such thing before!"

"I never needed an excuse not to know how to fight before!"

"RRRAAAAAARRRRRHHHHHHHHHH!" roared a voice not entirely unlike Kazumi's.

"Kaichou, why don't you summon the Disneyland spirits? If there's going to be a right time, this is it!"

"Oh, yeah!" he remembered, fumbling at the front of his cassock. He detached six of the seven badges, gripped them between his fingers, raised them before his face in order to invoke the spirits…and tripped over a stray chair. He went somersaulting across the floor at a highly unsafe speed, and the badges scattered away into the darkness. A moment later, he tumbled right into the reflective glass pane and came to an abrupt halt. An animatronic figure regarded him reproachfully from the other side as he sprawled on the floor, dazed. He couldn't make out Mutsuki's query of concern over the ringing in his ears.

The ghost in Kazumi's body walked up calmly and stooped to yank Haruto to his feet by the back of his costume. "Thanks," Haruto mumbled before he realized just what was going on. But by that time, the ghost had slammed him against the glass barrier and begun to scold him in mocking tones.

"I warned you," it said, and never had Kazumi's voice sounded so dangerous. "I put up a thousand discouragements to convince you to leave well enough alone and not bother me in my home. But you just had to keep plugging away at your _mission_."

"It's not your home," Haruto replied, trying to sound conciliatory and hoping that the ghost's strength would not shove him right through the glass. It already felt like it was bending and might crack at any second. "Don't you know where you are? This is _Disneyland_. This is the Haunted Mansion _ride_, not a real haunted house. None of the other ghosts here are real. You don't belong here."

The black fog was dissipating as the ghost concentrated on the task of intimidating Haruto. As the room cleared, Mutsuki spotted the two boys and cautiously circled around the room, preparing to sneak up behind Kazumi and deliver a wallop of an Asahina Special. Haruto noticed her and guessed her intentions, and fortunately did nothing to give her away.

"I know what this place is!" the ghost snapped. "How could I fail to notice the hordes of tourists? I'm dead, not blind! What business is it of yours where I choose to haunt?"

"It's for your own good! Don't you know what happens to spirits here? People's expectations will change you. You'll start to conform to the Disney vision. You won't be yourself anymore."

"It's a risk I'm willing to take. This is my home, and _no one_ will drive me from it!" The ghost raised one clawed hand. "None of you will leave here alive! You are all doomed! DOOOOOOOOOMMMED!"

Haruto looked up suddenly. "That's the corniest thing I ever heard!" he avowed. Suddenly inspired by a combination of self-preservation instinct and a realization that there was something very fishy about the ghost's exaggerated threats, he twisted out of Kazumi's grip, spun the other boy around before the ghost could react, and got him in a full nelson that effectively canceled out his supernaturally charged strength.

"Hey! How dare you? You'll pay for this!" the ghost bellowed.

"Kaichou!" Mutsuki complained. "You said you didn't know anything about fighting!"

"This isn't fighting," he said while the ghost squirmed and ranted. "It's self-defense. I'm not hurting him." He made a guilty little half-smile. "That's your job."

"Right!" Mutsuki grinned, pushing up her sleeve and brandishing her gohei. She went into a flurry of twirling and gesturing. "Asahina Special Mega-Maximum Exorcist Attack!" Finally, she clobbered Kazumi's skull with the sacred wand so hard that surely one of them ought to have cracked.

The effect was instant and dramatic. Kazumi's voice howled in fury, and a dark vapor not at all unlike the fog that had until recently filled the Ballroom poured out of his body, formed itself into a thick spiraling stream, rocketed upward, and disappeared through the ceiling. Almost at once, the room was plunged into total darkness, broken only by a few tiny winking red and green lights high up in the corners of the room that probably indicated security cameras or smoke alarms or something along those lines. Miscellaneous small mechanical noises from behind the glass signified that the animatronics were still whirling away. Apparently, the Haunted Mansion had been returned to its normal off-hours state of operation.

"Are you okay now, Kazumi-kun?" came Haruto's voice.

"Yeah," Kazumi sighed. "Sorry about that, guys."

"You can't help being that way," said Mutsuki, who somehow managed to put more accusation than exoneration in her tone, as though Kazumi's innocence were more vexing to her than his fault would have been. "Anyway, that ghost is gone. And I mean gone. I can't sense it anywhere."

"That must be why everything's back to normal," Kazumi supposed. "Does that mean we won?"

"I guess so," said Mutsuki sourly. "If you can call it that. The way I see it, we're screwed. We'll never find our way out of here without any lights on…and the badges! Kaichou, you lost the badges! They scattered all over the floor! How are we ever going to find them in the dark?"

"Calm down, Asahina-kun! We'll be fine." Haruto commanded her, fumbling in his pocket. He had absent-mindedly slipped the keychain flashlight into it at some point in the Tomorrowland souvenir shop (had it really been only an hour or so since then?), and was feeling very relieved that he had had the presence of mind to be so absent-minded. He found the light and clicked it on, and as small and dim as it was it was infinitely better than nothing.

They spent the next few minutes hunting down the six errant badges (which were not hard to find, since their bright colors stood out boldly in the dust of the Ballroom), and several more after that carefully making their way out of the Mansion. The other two vetoed Kazumi's suggestion that they cling to the front of a Doom Buggy and ride it to the exit; instead, they found a utility door that led to a hallway that led to the exit.

"Wait…" said Kazumi as they emerged into the peaceful moonlit night. "Does that mean we're done? We can't be done! That was too quick! And not exciting enough! Stories like this are supposed to end with a really big climax and a titanic battle between good and evil! And I wanna see Princess Hanako again!"

"Not everything can be an epic story, Kazumi-kun," Haruto reminded his sullen cohort. "Real life doesn't work that way."

"Well, then, we'd best roll up our sleeves and get back to work," said Mutsuki.

"What are you talking about, Asahina-kun? I just said—"

"Kaichou. Since when does anything at Disneyland bear the faintest resemblance to real life? Everything here _should_ follow the path of an epic story. To tell the truth, I was a little suspicious as soon as I saw how fast my exorcism worked. Cheer up, Kazumi—you'll get to see your princess again after all."

"But where could the ghost have gone?" Haruto wondered. "I'm not sensing anything either, not anywhere in the park." He and Mutsuki shot wary looks at Kazumi, but he was clean.

"It must be lying low, probably hoping we'll think we did manage to get rid of it," Mutsuki reasoned.

"It should realize it's dealing with professionals!" Kazumi joined in. "Well, semi-professionals, anyway. Really motivated amateurs. Should we split up again to look for it?"

"No," Haruto said, shaking his head violently. "No. It's much too vicious for any of us to risk facing it alone. We stick together."

"And our search pattern?" asked Mutsuki.

"We'll start from Parkwide." There came no further explanation.

Haruto led them swiftly through Fantasyland, underneath the Castle, and into the hub of the theme park. He didn't stop until they reached the very center of the circle, with its rows of decorative hedges radiating like wheel spokes. He paused for a lengthy moment, slowly looking from side to side, scanning the entrances to the themed lands like a radar sweep.

"…Kaichou…?" Kazumi asked tentatively.

"It's time," he announced solemnly, "to call for reinforcements!"

Up went the badges. "Listen up, spirits of Disneyland! We have an emergency at Parkwide! Meet here at once and I hope to God this works! WELCOME!"

To Be Continued…


	8. Chapter 8: The Trap

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence:_ Haunted Junction _and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Part 8: The Trap

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They came.

From the tropical jungles of Adventureland came Chibi Maui, the junior Tiki God, wielding a sacred net that held the sun itself. No one knew what it could do (apart from providing first-rate illumination), for Chibi Maui had never found himself constrained to use it.

From the wild frontiers of Westernland came Red Buffalo Cape, resplendent in his dyed bison hide cloak that whipped in a prairie wind only he was privy to. He was devastatingly handsome, even with the scarlet war paint partially obscuring his features.

From the sleepy backwoods of Critter Country came Ursus Major, the Great Bear, walking in slow motion, shuddering the ground with every step. His awe-inspiring hugeness was second only to the dullness of the expression on his shaggy face.

From the composite fairytale kingdom of Fantasyland came Princess Hanako, loveliest of the lovely, not so much dashing to the rescue as dancing. Not just another pretty face, she exuded spirit and determination.

From the classically warped city of Toontown came Yuga-Yuga, spirit of the funhouse mirror. With bizarrely undulating body lines, the androgynous child was a sight—and sound—to madden the mind of anyone who took existence too seriously.

From the gleaming idealized future postulated by Tomorrowland came Nichi Akari, the comically inept robot. He meant well, at least.

And from the old-fashioned, homey elegance of the World Bazaar came Madam Miyako, the leader of the pack, impish but authoritative matriarch of the Disneyland spirits. Her feather-edged fan, the symbol of her right of rule, was very much in evidence as she made her appearance.

"We're here, ducks!" she declared cheerily, diminishing the gravity of the moment. "What needs doing?"

"The ghost escaped from the Haunted Mansion," Haruto told them. "Go back to your home territories and look for it."

There was a beat. "Um…you called us all out just to send us back?" summed up Chibi Maui.

"I know it seems a little pointless, but you all know your lands like no one else. Not only will it take less time this way, but it will work better."

"And what you do while we search?" wondered Red Buffalo Cape in the aboriginal accent he affected.

"We'll be setting up here. If and when you find the ghost, drive it back here. We'll work out what to do from there."

Uncertain looks were passed around. But the spirits had agreed to follow Haruto's commands and weren't about to go back on their collective word. With a single, silent nod, they dispersed to their respective home areas.

"'Setting up'?" Mustuki wondered dubiously. "What can we do to set up?"

"Kazumi-kun, do you know how to make one-way spirit wards?"

"In theory? Yes. In practice? That's a different story."

"Just do the best you can. Make enough of them to ward this entire circle so that spirits can move in but not out."

"Yes, sir!" Kazumi agreed, and settled down to busy himself with his ink brush and paper slips.

"Asahina-kun!" Haruto barked professionally.

"Yes!" she responded automatically.

"Turn this into a magic circle. The way those bushes are placed, it'll be easy to find the points of the hexagram."

"So what are you going to do?" the girl asked, taking out her ceremonial stump of chalk.

"Help Kazumi place the wards."

It didn't take very long to close the circle. In retrospect, Haruto would realize that this was because Kazumi, in creating the wards, had chosen speed at the expense of accuracy. But at the time, the possibility didn't occur to him. He was glad that they were making such good progress.

"Kaichou, I'm done!" Mustuki informed him.

"We're almost done, too," Haruto replied, affixing the second-to-last ward to the pavement.

"Ha!" said Kazumi, slapping down the last and sloppiest of the paper amulets. "I'd like to see a ghost get past these! Once it's already gotten in here, that is."

"Good job, Kazumi. Now all we have to do is wait for the plan to play out."

"It won't be long now."

"You really think so—wait—Asahina-kun, you didn't say that just now, did you?"

"No, Kaichou."

Suddenly, it was as if the area enclosed within the circle were a pond into which someone had thrown a pebble made of bitter ice. A series of ripples passed throughout the space, radiating from the center, and with each undulation the temperature dropped by about ten degrees. The Holy Student Council members were left gasping as the supernatural cold raked their bodies and souls.

Then, impossibly, the outermost bushes in the spoke pattern began to grow, putting out new branches that reached up and spread out overhead and stretched toward each other, growing not leaves but long, cruel thorns, until the whole of Parkwide was encased in a dome-shaped latticework of deadly-looking brambles.

It would have been very dark under there if the thorns had not been tipped with little globes of poisonous-looking light. Even so, the tiny orbs served more to throw the shadows into sharp relief than to provide illumination. And those shadows moved, and drew together, and emerged from themselves to form a hunched, misty-edged shape that glared at the Holy Student Council with balefully glowing eyes.

"I was right here all along," it smirked. Its voice was nondescript, almost a monotone. "I knew you wouldn't give up. Why won't you just give up and leave me alone?"

"We…have a…job…to do…" Haruto wheezed with chattering teeth, still recovering from the abrupt chilling in the air.

"This is your last chance," the ghost said calmly. "Won't you just go away and let me be? I wasn't hurting anyone before tonight."

"It has a point," said Mutsuki. "But it's really up to you as our leader, Kaichou."

"We can't—we _won't_—abandon our duty," Haruto said resolutely. "Are you going to threaten us with imprisonment here? Because you'll be trapped, too—we've warded this circle so that spirits can enter but not leave."

For a moment, the ghost evinced fear. It quickly turned about and tried to pass beyond the wall of thorns…and succeeded. Hanging in the air just outside the prickly cage, it burst into raucous laughter while the Holy Student Council stood crestfallen within.

"Warded, indeed! I've never seen spirit wards so incompetently made! Is this the best that Madam Miyako can throw at me? And to think that I mistook your outrageous persistence for skill! I needn't have felt endangered by you!"

"So does that mean you'll let us go?" Kazumi asked hopefully.

"Don't be ridiculous," the ghost sneered. "I'm not about to back down now. You three will stay in there for the rest of your mortal lives…not that that will be very long under the circumstances."

"And what circumstances are those?" Mutsuki huffed, understandably put out. But from outside the trap was only silence.

"I think it left," Haruto said.

"Well, nice job, Kaichou!" the girl snapped. "Tell me—can we abandon our duty once we're dead?"

"I don't know about you, but I still feel pretty lively," Haruto informed her. "I think that ghost is more bluff than substance. Haven't you noticed how—how _hackneyed_ its behavior is?"

"So what? We're still trapped, aren't we?"

"Relax, Asahina-kun! The Disneyland spirits will be back soon, and they'll get us out of here."

"Um…Kaichou, sempai?"

"What, Kazumi-kun?" the two chorused irritably.

"How soon do you think they'll get here? Because…" He trailed off, pointing up at the spiny ceiling of the enclosure.

Slowly but perceptibly, the thorn-covered branches were growing downward. Those comprising the walls, too, were gradually extending inward.

"So it can't hurt us physically, huh?" Haruto said to Mutsuki, his tone as pointed as the menace overhead.

"This is your fault, you know," she growled back.

"Kaichou!" Kazumi wailed. "Hurry up and summon the spirits back so they can get us out of here!"

"I can't," he said. "They're still carrying out my other command. I have to dismiss them before I can summon them again, and I can't dismiss them until they come back."

"Thanks for clearing that up," Mutsuki said sardonically, planting herself in the very center of Parkwide, where the deadly glowing thorns would reach last.

"Good heavens!" came a startled shriek from outside. "What happened here? Ducks, are you in there?"

"Madam Miyako!" Haruto called. "The ghost was here all along! It trapped us in here and then disappeared!"

"And it's trying to kill us!" Kazumi added. "Get in here and open up one of those gates of yours before we get poked full of holes!"

"Now-now-now, don't get all in a fuss," she stammered, flustered. "Just give me a moment here." There were sounds of general poking around on the outside of the barrier. "Hm," said Madam Miyako.

"What do you mean, 'hm'?" Mutsuki demanded.

"Are these your wards, ducks? I can't seem to get past them."

Mutsuki rounded on Kazumi. "Kazumi…" she said dangerously.

"Yes, sempai?" he replied nervously.

"You pathetic excuse for a monk-in-training! You made the wards _backwards_! It would have been bad enough if you had just made them _wrong_!"

"Asahina-kun, back off," Haruto sighed. "Madam Miyako, please go round up the other spirits. At least one of them should be able to get us out of here without having to cross the wards."

"Now, that I can do!" the lady spirit chirped. With a _pop_, she was gone.

With another _pop_ a moment later, she was back. "They should all be here in a minute," she said. "Now what exactly is the problem in there?"

"You see these thorns?" Mutsuki said bitterly. "They're closing in on us. We'd rather they didn't."

"Yes, I can see how that would be a problem for mortals," Miyako said as though she were the most perceptive being in the world.

The ground shuddered, heralding the imminent appearance of Ursus Major, and hence the rest of the Disneyland spirits. There was a moment of near-pandemonium as the apparitions discovered what had become of Parkwide and the Holy Student Council tried to explain the situation to them over the noise of their consternation. Then things settled down enough for all of them to try and figure out what to do.

"The important thing," Miyako said, "is not to panic." She put a heavily made-up eye to one of the few gaps in the briar hedge. "At this rate of growth, I'd say we have ten to fifteen minutes before the thorns get too close for comfort. That's plenty of time."

"Okay," said Mutsuki. "Okay. Okay." She sounded like she was trying to brainwash herself into believing it. "Let's start simple. Maybe some of the wards aren't working at all. It was Kazumi who made them, after all."

"Hey!" Kazumi protested, affronted.

"She's right, though," said Haruto. "Check for weak points in the circle."

It didn't take long for the spirits to determine that there were no such points—not even between the wards.

"See? I'm not _that_ incompetent."

"But that means we're still trapped," Haruto pointed out.

"Chibi Maui!" Mutsuki exclaimed, inspired. "Use your sun to burn through the thorns!"

"I can't," the small tiki spirit apologized. "During the night it only gives light, not heat. If it were hot, it would burn through my net."

"That's it. We're gonna die," she said, sounding more petulant than worried.

"There is one thing…" Princess Hanako said hesitantly. "But I think we'll have trouble convincing him to do it."

"Well, what is it?" said Haruto. "We don't have all night!"

"Ursus Major could break the hedges through sheer force. But he'd be reluctant to do it because he'd hurt his paws on the thorns. He's such a big baby when it comes to pain."

"I don't see that we have any choice. See what you can do, Hanako."

The pretty toilet ghost called up to her bruin companion and began explaining the idea to him.

"Isn't she wonderful?" Kazumi sighed, entirely lovestruck. "The Miss Hanakos are the treasures of the spirit world!"

Ursus suddenly made a roar that sounded more like a whine and staggered backward, each step shaking the ground.

"Please, Ursus! They won't stand a chance unless you do this! I know you don't like pokies but imagine how much worse it will be for them if you don't!"

Ursus only whimpered.

"You're very sweet, dear, but there are times when sweet doesn't cut it," Madam Miyako broke in. She floated up to the level of the huge shaggy animal's head and addressed him sternly. "Now you stop that blubbering this instant! Show a little backbone! As big as you are, and you're afraid of a little prick in the paw? I've never heard of anything so cowardly! I tell you this—if those three children end up being brutally punctured to death and their ghosts take up residence here, thus adding to _my_ burden of responsibility, I am holding _you_, Ursus Major, entirely accountable!"

"Does she have to put it that way?" Kazumi winced, dodging a large spine that chose that moment to add about a foot to its length.

All while she was lecturing the giant bear, Miyako was advancing on him, forcing him to retreat. She cleverly and subtly changed the angle of her approach, pushing him into a carefully calculated position, and as she finished the tirade, she smacked him smartly on the nose with her fan. Terrified of the comparatively miniscule but authoritative spirit, he reeled backward, tripped over his own hind feet, and fell. One outflung paw slapped against the circle of thorns and smashed a section of it to bits. Ursus Major was so busy being afraid of Miyako that he quite failed to notice that he had injured his paw…or more to the point, that he hadn't. His hide and fur were too thick, his pads too tough, to yield to thorns that were huge only from the perspective of normal human size.

The Holy Student Council peeked tentatively out of the new opening in the barrier, found it to be as it appeared, and with a triple sigh of relief stepped out into the open air. Their costumes sported various small rips, their hands a few minor scratches, but by and large they were unharmed. Mutsuki immediately swooped toward the ground and pulled up one of the inside-out wards, and the remnant of the cage shuddered and collapsed into a sort of thick ground fog that took abnormally long to disperse. Only the hedges that were supposed to be there remained.

"You did great, Ursus!" Princess Hanako cooed to the great bear, hugging his enormous head as he lay befuddled on the ground.

"What about me, Hanako-san? Did I do great too?" Kazumi practically begged to be recognized.

"I guess," she said rather lukewarmly. Kazumi clouded up like the sky in February.

"Kazumi-kun, suck it up. We don't have time for this right now," said Haruto. "We have to find where that ghost has gone…again!"

"No need, duck," said Madam Miyako, who had taken her attention off Parkwide as soon as it became clear that the crisis there was resolved. "I've found it already."

One by one as they realized what was going on, the others present followed the matronly spirit's gaze. Suddenly, Princess Hanako screamed in abject horror. It was hard to say who was more dismayed at that—Ursus Major or Kazumi.

The reason for her distress was evident. The ghost had taken over—and cast a dreadful pall of darkness over—the principal icon of her personal domain in Disneyland.

Cinderella's castle.

To Be Continued…


	9. Chapter 9: The Epic Battle

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction_ and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 9: The Epic Battle Between Light and Darkness

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The structure's form itself had not changed, but "dreadful pall of darkness" was no metaphor—it was literally coated in the turbulent black fog, like semi-solid shadow, that they had learned to associate with the ghost's presence. The sinister mist flowed from the uppermost window of the tallest tower like heavy smoke or choking vines, distorting the way that light struck the edifice, putting highlights and shadows in the wrong places.

"Argh! Didn't this story already _have_ a climax?" Mutsuki growled, kicking at nothing on the ground.

"A few of them, I think," Haruto offered much more calmly. Kazumi had begun vigorously fanning Princess Hanako, who was lying down because she felt faint. She looked faint, too—her image was translucent and slightly blurred around the edges.

"This reminds me of a video game," Mutsuki went on. "You know, the ones where at the end, you have to defeat the villain five or six times, and he comes back meaner every time?"

"You ducks are being awfully flippant," Madam Miyako said tensely. "Have you any idea how serious this is?"

"Gimme a break. That little punk was doing much worse to the Haunted Mansion earlier," Mutsuki said dismissively.

The squat ghost brought her feather-rimmed fan down on the mortal girl's head. "Idiot child!" she proclaimed, her voice taking on a shrill edge due to her agitation. "That castle is more than just the symbol of Fantasyland! It is the spiritual center of this entire park! Princess Hanako is fading away because it is corrupted—" Kazumi looked up with a sharp gasp. "—and if this situation continues, all of us spirits will share her fate…or worse."

"What are we waiting for?" Kazumi demanded, springing to his feet. "There's a Miss Hanako in trouble and everyone's just standing around!"

"So what are we supposed to do?" Mutsuki snapped. "This thing has consistently gotten the better of us all night! Every time we _think_ we're making progress, it turns out to be just the prelude to something worse! It's like a badly written epic adventure story!"

"Well, you can't expect good writing from a little kid…" Haruto said absently. Then he wondered why everyone was staring at him.

"Explain what you mean," Miyako commanded him.

"I've just been noticing," Haruto went on, "that the general way the ghost is behaving is like a little kid with a vivid imagination but not much experience in telling good stories. Look at that, for instance." He indicated the haunted Castle, the black fog distorting. "Objectively speaking, that's a pretty good horror effect. But it's so…"

"Over the top?" Mutsuki filled in.

"Exactly. And clichéd. And it's not just the melodrama. Remember what you said earlier, about how the ghost was more scared of us than we were of it? I'm starting to think you're right. What we're dealing with here is a child who loves Disneyland so much that he—she—it is literally _afraid_ of being made to leave. And so I don't think we should force it. Let's find some peaceable way to resolve this, some kind of compromise."

"Very pretty words, duck, but don't you think it's a bit late for that? That little monster has attacked you physically, several times. By definition it is a hostile spirit, and we want none of that sort around here. This is supposed to be a happy, friendly place."

"But it wouldn't be hostile if it didn't think it was being forced out!" Haruto argued. "Don't you see? It hadn't done a thing wrong before we started messing with it tonight! Madam Miyako, if you invited it to stay, I'm sure it would be a model citizen!"

"I'd like to believe you're right, duck, but you're just speculating."

"We'd better try something quick!" Kazumi broke in. "Princess Hanako doesn't look so good! I mean, she doesn't look so _well_. She's a Toilet Hanako; of course she looks _good_."

"Grrrruuuhhhhhhh!" Ursus Major whimpered on Hanako's behalf.

"You heard them," Haruto said quietly, resolutely. "We have to try something, and treating it like our enemy hasn't worked so far." He gazed up at the window that was the source of the black fog. At the base of that window was a balcony barely large enough for one person to stand on, at some risk of falling should there come along a mild earthquake or a stiff breeze. It was so small because it was built to be decorative rather than functional, and because the whole upper part of the Castle was built disproportionately small, in order to make it seem farther away from the ground and thus make the entire edifice look taller.

"I have to get up there somehow," said the president of the Holy Student Council, almost to himself.

"Kaichou!" Mutsuki wailed. "Are you _crazy_? You'd have to be a freaking ninja to keep your balance up there! Do you have a death wish or something?"

"Better him than us!" Kazumi reasoned. "But I don't see that it matters, since there's no way up there. Even Ursus Major isn't tall enough to give him a boost."

"Nichi, come here a minute," said Haruto.

The comical little robot waddled over obediently. "Yes, Houjo-san?"

With one swift movement, Haruto clobbered Nichi to bits, all of them loosely connected by yards and yards of garishly colored wires. "Gyah! My parts! How cruel!" Nichi's head lamented. "Betrayal from the one I trusted most!"

"I'm really sorry," Haruto apologized, lashing the robot's talon-like hands to his shoes. "I'll make it up to you somehow. How strong are your jaws?"

Moments later, Haruto was scaling the sheer wall of the Castle, suspended by several strands of none-too-sturdy electrical wires. Nichi's hands served well enough as makeshift crampons, while the futuristic spirit's mouth was clamped tightly on the rim of the balcony in lieu of a grappling hook. Haruto faded in and out of visibility due to the shifting shadow mist wreathing the building.

"Wow…he is fantastically brave, isn't he?" observed Chibi Maui.

"I guess he is," Mutsuki said pensively.

"Careful, Kaichou," Kazumi murmured, his eyes riveted on the ascending figure even as he continued attending to the weakened Princess Hanako.

After several nerve-wracking minutes and twice as many close calls, Haruto pulled himself, panting, onto the miniscule balcony. Despite his hopes, it proved to be no bigger in fact than it had appeared from the ground: it provided only about as much surface as an office desktop. He rolled over onto his back, drawing up his knees in order to fit, and spent a moment re-orienting himself, shaking off the vertigo induced by the climb. While no one could rightly call Haruto acrophobic, he was not crazy about precarious heights.

"Cn I lt guh nuh?" asked Nichi through a mouthful of plaster.

"Yeah, sure," Haruto breathed. He couldn't see a thing, but that was because the black fog was thickest there, fresh from the source and caught in the balcony like water in a basin. He found his own feet by touch, removed Nichi's hands from them, groped around until he located the robot's head, wound the lengths of wire around the whole heap, and chucked it over the balcony's edge, trusting those on the ground to catch it and reassemble the futuristic spirit. (They did, even though Nichi complained for several straight minutes about the cruelty of the method.) Then he sat up and faced the window itself.

"You really are a fool, aren't you?" said a voice from inside. It was the same dreadful voice that had threatened them in the Haunted Mansion, but there was now a twang of childishness underlying the demonic tones. "This is the third time you have directly opposed me in my own territory."

"Hey, _we_ beat _you_ the first time," Haruto said rebelliously. "You beat us the second time, but maybe that just means it's our turn to win again. They say the third time's the charm…"

"I hold more of an advantage than ever!" the ghost boasted. "Already I am sinking my essence into this Castle, and gaining power from the energy built up here. I have control! I can do…_this_!"

Suddenly, there was a dreadful noise—a cracking, groaning sound as if the Castle were standing up and shuffling off its foundation to roam about the park. What was actually happening was almost as shocking: one of the towers was changing shape slightly, elongating into a severe pointed shape until the spire stood up against the sky like the blade of a spear. It was hard to tell in the dim light of night, but it seemed to darken as well, turning as black and slick-shiny as a leech. The entire transformation took mere seconds.

Haruto, crouched on the balcony, _felt_ the change occur. It was as if a black hand had reached into his soul and extracted part of his potential for joy and simple, childlike imagination. Gasping with the shock, he knew at once that it was due to the symbolism of the Castle—symbolism that mattered to more than just the theme park itself. Disneyland was built on Walt Disney's dreams, which were a gift to the entire world. If the evil force here—whatever it was—won out, all of humanity would lose.

There was a shriek from below, followed by a general bustle. "Kaichou!" came Mutsuki's voice, her normal tetchiness sounding distinctly forced, strained with concern. "What are you waiting for? Princess Hanako's getting worse! Drag that little pest out by the hair if you have to!"

Haruto didn't answer. The black fog was gushing from the window more copiously than ever, and he was beginning to feel light-headed, as if it weren't good to breathe the stuff for too long. Probably, it wasn't.

"Not too pleasant, is it?" the ghost mocked. "I can do it again, you know, and again and again. Eventually, _this_ tower will go the same route…and I've a feeling it would be rather hard for you to keep from falling in that event."

Another tower shivered and warped into a cruel needle. Haruto shuddered also, as another piece of his capacity for simple pleasure was extinguished. Kept up, this would eventually be much worse than anything Yocho had done to him. How could he ever have thought to make any headway by trying to make friends with the specter? Suddenly dizzy, he flattened himself against the floor of the balcony and made as if to grip the cold concrete, as though he might fall off otherwise. There he lay, feeling almost sick with growing despair and a cold certainty that this story would not have a happy ending.

_But that's impossible…_ he thought dully. _Disney stories_ always _have a happy ending!_

Just then, a jolt of energy passed through him, allowing him to throw off the adverse effects. He had no idea what it might have been, but what it felt like…if asked to imagine what it would feel like to be struck by lightning without any pain or injury at all, he would have guessed it was something like that. All at once his head cleared, and ideas came to him as if someone else had dropped them into his brain.

_Of course…_ he realized. _You may have just sealed your own defeat, ghost._ He knew—he was almost certain that he knew—how to achieve victory…but it required him getting down to the ground safely so that he could pass along his inspiration to the others. He regretted having dropped Nichi. Against his better judgment, he edged over to the lip of the balcony and glanced down at the ground. It looked absurdly far away, as if the forced perspective were working from this end. His compatriots and the Disneyland spirits seemed no bigger than beetles.

"You make it too tempting," the ghost sneered. Too late, Haruto realized his mistake, as the tallest tower mutated so quickly that the drastic motion sent him tumbling over the balcony and into open air, high above the ground.

Time slowed to a poking crawl. He thought he heard a shriek of horror, but he wasn't afraid on his own account…because his rational mind was in shock, leaving in charge the childlike side of him that wouldn't accept the possibility of an unhappy ending, and which didn't recognize his fall as anything more dangerous than the descent down the slope of a roller coaster.

The shock began to wear off, and the panic to set in, when he felt something whiz past his shoulders, so close that it nearly clipped him. Then he jerked to a halt, still several meters up in the air. For a moment he was completely disoriented; then he opened his eyes to find himself suspended from a taut rope that ran through the back of his cassock. Red Buffalo Cape was hurriedly tying one end of it to a bench on the ground, and by craning his neck Haruto could see the other end, attached to the shaft of an arrow that still quivered where it had lodged between the bricks of the Castle.

"_Wow!_" came Kazumi's voice. "That was so impressive, Red Buffalo!"

Madam Miyako floated up until she was level with Haruto. "Are you all right there, duck?"

"I think so," he replied. "But listen—"

"Well, down you go, then!" she clucked cheerily, striking him ever so lightly with her fan. Instantly, he was sliding down the rope at the speed of a diving falcon, yelling in panic. Red Buffalo Cape reacted with flawless reflexes, stepping swiftly to one side so that Haruto crashed into the bench instead of into him.

"I get no support at all," Haruto muttered from somewhere between his own feet.

The hem of a scarlet hibakama moved into his field of view. "Well?" said Mutsuki's voice from a more elevated point. "What did you find out?"

Haruto forced himself upright. "I think I know how we can defeat that thing!"

Nine faces pleaded for him to get _on_ with it.

"It's a little hard to explain," he continued, searching for words. "I think…I think we have to follow the Disney formula. That way, we're sure to have a happy ending."

"Of course: The Formula!" Madam Miyako exclaimed. "Brilliant, duck!"

"How do we do that?" Kazumi wailed. "Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've _watched_ any of those movies?"

"Silly boy, that doesn't matter—The Formula is timeless!" Miyako came back instantly. "And we have all the necessary elements right here!"

"What elements?" asked Mutsuki.

The Disneyland spirits smiled as if they had been asked to perform a favorite recitation. Even Princess Hanako found enough strength to sit up halfway.

"Start," Madam Miyako intoned, "with a hero—clever, pure of heart and usually confident, but misfit enough to suffer occasional bouts of self-doubt…"

"…give him (or her) one or two loyal sidekicks to offer help, advice, and plot twists…" Nichi Akari added.

"…pit them against a villain of great power and cunning, but also against their own internal troubles…" Red Buffalo Cape continued, for once dropping his stilted accent without being prompted.

"…round out the cast with a selection of bold personalities on both sides of the conflict, providing comic relief, dramatic tension, and filler…" Yuga-Yuga grinned.

"…make sure to include at least a little romance…" Princess Hanako whispered.

"…build up to a climactic battle between Good and Evil wherein the odds are so stacked against the heroes that they must surely fail…" Chibi Maui said.

"…but…all live happily ever after." Ursus Major rumbled, speaking articulately for the very first time.

"Wow. We do have all that, don't we?" Kazumi reflected. "Except for the last one, of course, but if we use the others right, we should be able to get to it…right?"

"There's one more element we need, I think" Haruto said, "and that's the right weapon—the only weapon—to use to defeat the villain. I think we must have it, because we have everything else. We only need to figure out what it is."

"Well, you're the hero here, duck," said Miyako. "Use that heroic cleverness and purity of heart and figure it out!"

_Follow The Formula,_ Haruto thought frantically. _Good against evil, light versus darkness…light…versus darkness…_

Suddenly, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. "That's it!" he erupted suddenly. "Chibi Maui, release your sun!"

"My sun?" the animated statue repeated.

Haruto looked him right in the eyes with a witty grin. "You don't see any other sun around, do you? The ghost is attacking the Castle with darkness, right? So we'll use light to stop it!"

"I'll do it, but I must warn you that I might not be able to catch it again."

"We'll worry about that later," Haruto resolved.

With a flourish, Chibi Maui unbound his net and let the minute sun fly free, and Parkwide was instantly bathed in the light of noon. The tiny orb zipped about erratically like a nuclear-powered firefly, and where its rays struck the Castle, the dark shroud was driven back.

"It's working!" Mutsuki cheered.

Her celebration, however, was premature. The sun, though intensely bright, was too small to illuminate the entire building at once. It flew around and around the structure, defeating the black fog one section at a time, but as it left any given spot, the shadow simply returned.

"It's _not_ working!" Mutsuki corrected herself.

"We're not licked yet!" Haruto announced. "Yuga-Yuga, use your mirror to spread that light around!"

"Will do, boss!" Yuga-Yuga chuckled, flying off to assist the sun.

And now a difference began to be made. The uneven, bendable surface of the mirror scattered the sunlight in waves and pockets, assailing the darkness so unpredictably that it could not recover as it had been doing. Maui's sun dashed about, Yuga-Yuga turned and twisted in patterns complementing the tiny star's motion, the mirror turned its focused beams into broad splashes of brilliance, dispelling the darkness wherever it touched. But one thing remained unaffected: the source of the black fog, the highest window of the tallest tower where the ghost itself lurked.

"Yuga-Yuga!" Haruto called up. "See the window where the black fog is coming from? Aim the sunlight into that window!"

This the funhouse spirit did, and the reaction was instantaneous. The black fog shut off like a faucet, and a tremendous howl bellowed from the Castle. The warped and mutated walls and turrets snapped back to their original, Imagineer-designed shapes and positions as if a rubber band had broken. A little, blurry shape fell out of the highest window and landed in the moat with a ripple.

"Was that the ghost?" wondered Kazumi.

"I can't think of anything else it could have been. Come on!" said Mutsuki, waving her younger comrade over to the bridge.

Meanwhile, Maui's sun, its task complete, hovered in the air for a moment and then rocketed away toward the east, leaving Parkwide dark once again. "Oh, no!" Maui wailed. "I knew this would happen! How will I ever catch it again?"

"You'll think of something, duck," Miyako comforted him. "You always do."

"What about the ghost?" asked Princess Hanako, fully recovered.

"The rest of the party turned toward the bridge just in time to see Mutsuki shove Kazumi off it.

"Asahina-kun!" Haruto shouted in shock. "What are you doing?"

"The ghost landed in the moat, right?" she reasoned. "We have to get it out of there somehow."

"Well, now we need to think of a way to get _Kazumi_ out of there," Haruto muttered, peering down into the dark water. There was no sign of Kazumi. "Uh…" Haruto said nervously.

With an ursine sigh, Ursus Major leaned over the bridge railing, dipped his paws into the water, and came back up clutching a bedraggled, glaze-eyed Kazumi.

"Yes! He's possessed!" Mutsuki crowed. "Time to interrogate that little punk of a ghost! Asahina Special—"

"Be gentle for once!" Haruto warned her.

"—Nice And Gentle Exorcist Attack!" she finished, giving Kazumi the softest of raps with her gohei. His eyes brightened, and a misty little shadow trickled out of his body and formed an indistinct shape on the ground. "Hey," Mutsuki grunted, prodding the shape with her toe. "Knock it off. At least sit up."

"I'm sorry," came a completely childlike voice. "I never meant for it to go that far."

"Well—it did," Mutsuki fired back. "And now—"

"Asahina-kun," Haruto said calmly, gently pushing her aside. "Let me." He addressed the ghost, who was gradually developing a more defined form. "Why did you do all that?"

"Because you were going to make me leave. I couldn't stand that. I love this place too much."

"So I was right about that. You really are just a little kid, aren't you?"

"I guess so."

"What's your name?"

"Noriko."

There was a pause. Then Mutsuki leaned over and ranted, "You're—you're a _girl_!"

It was undeniable. The ghost was distinct enough now to be easily recognizable as a young girl with braids, not more than nine or ten years old, wearing a white blouse and the world's most adorable plaid pinafore…and a Minnie Mouse ears hat (distinguishable from a Mickey Mouse ears hat by the presence of a small pink bow) with a cursive hiragana _No-ri-ko_ chain-stitched on the back in gold-colored thread. She knelt forlornly on the ground, her Mary Jane-attired feet splayed outward, the saddest, sorriest little girl ghost on the planet.

"Duck?" Madam Miyako asked her tenderly, her face and voice filled to overflowing with grandmotherly sympathy and concern.

"I'm really, really sorry," Noriko repeated.

"Don't feel so bad, sweetie," said Princess Hanako. "There was no permanent harm done, and I'm sure Madam Miyako will let you stay if you promise to behave."

"Well," said Miyako, fanning herself agitatedly. "Well. The problem there would be finding a territory for her. All the themed lands are occupied. I suppose she could inhabit the parking lot…"

Noriko clouded up, ready to burst into tears.

"Oh, you old nanny goat!" Yuga-Yuga warbled. "You think every spirit the world over is as territorial as you are! I wouldn't mind sharing Toontown with Noriko!"

"And I wouldn't mind sharing Adventureland with her!" Chibi Maui agreed.

"Nor I Westernland," Red Buffalo Cape put in.

The rest of the spirits nodded their accord.

"Maybe…" Noriko said tentatively, not meeting anyone's eyes, "…maybe…I could stay…right here? In Parkwide?"

"Now, why in the world would you want that?" Miyako said skeptically. "Parkwide isn't part of any of the themed lands."

"No, it's not. It's part of all of them," Haruto observed. "The hub of Disneyland, connected to everything else. No offense, Madam Miyako, but you seem to be rather out of touch with the other spirits here. Maybe Noriko could be a—a liaison between all seven of you."

"I'd like that," Noriko said, looking up at Haruto.

"Goodness knows we could all use some more sturdy connections," said Nichi Akari, proving his point by gesturing with a hand that promptly fell off his arm.

"It will change you, duck," Miyako warned Noriko. "There's not a one of us who retains the form we knew before we made this place our home."

"I love Disneyland," Noriko responded resolutely, even defiantly. "There's nothing the atmosphere here can do to me that I haven't already done to myself. And I want nothing more than to be the spirit of Parkwide and be part of all the themed lands at once."

"Oh, have it your way," Miyako huffed. And with that, she snapped her fan shut and faded out.

"Welcome to the family, Noriko," said Princess Hanako. "That's what she did when she gave up trying to convince me not to stay here, too."

"Gruh," Ursus Major nodded.

"So…that's it, then? All's well that ends well?" Mutsuki wondered.

"Looks like it, sempai," Kazumi grinned, throwing a fraternal arm around his senior's shoulders. "A happy ending, wouldn't you say?" He yawned ostentatiously. "I wonder what time it is?"

"So late it's early, I'd say," Haruto noted, pointing to the merest hint of the glow of dawn that teased the eastern sky.

"Oh, good," Chibi Maui said with satisfaction. "I guess the sun is trained to its routine now and I don't need to keep it in the net anymore."

"But that's the _real_ sun," Haruto protested.

"Of course," Chibi Maui agreed. "You don't still think I'd go to all that trouble to manage anything less, do you?"

There is a limit to the amount of nonsense a single human mind can withstand at once. Haruto fell over in his consternation.

To Be Continued…


	10. Chapter 10: Epilogue

Foolish Mortals

_Statement of Innocence: _Haunted Junction_ and its respective characters and their likenesses and all that other good stuff are copyrighted to their creator and whoever else has the licenses. A bunch of stuff licensed to the Disney Corporation and some of its corporate allies also appears in this fanfic. I'm not challenging anyone's copyrights or licenses. I'm not making any profit off this thing; it's all in good fun. Nobody sue me—it would be like trying to milk a sparrow._

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Chapter 10: All's Well That Ends Well…Assuming It Ends

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"Kaichooouuuu!" Mutsuki groaned. "This is no time to be lying down on the job! Soon the early-morning shift employees will start arriving, and we'll be in the worst trouble of our lives! I'll be stuffed into the Pluto suit for sure!"

"I wasn't lying down on the job, I was…ugh, never mind."

From the far corners of the park came faint sounds of security guards and maintenance workers arriving and starting to perform their eleventh-hour preparations for the daily opening.

"We need to hide someplace!" Kazumi exclaimed. "Princess Hanako, can I stick with you?"

But she—indeed, all of the spirits—had vanished with the encroaching dawn. They, too, were Cast Members with roles to perform, and their workday was about to start.

In the distance, flashlight beams became visible.

"Guys, I think we're surrounded," Mutsuki squeaked, sounding uncharacteristically frightened. She could face the worst terrors the spirit world had to offer with no worse reaction than sardonic remarks, but human authorities made her nervous.

"Don't panic," said Haruto, as much to himself as to the other two. "I'll think of something. We've accomplished too much tonight for it to end like this."

Suddenly, he went blind. One of the approaching security guards had carelessly aimed his flashlight beam right into Haruto's eyes.

"Hey!" the guard called. "Are you kids supposed to be here?"

"eek," Mutsuki squeaked, too petrified to make any more sound that a slightly rusted door hinge.

"First day on the job?" the guard continued. "Aren't sure what your assignment is yet?"

"That's it!" Haruto agreed, not quite sure what the guard was asking but eager to seize upon _any_ suggestion that made their presence legitimate.

"Tell him you got lost in the dark," a voice recommended.

"In fact, we're not even quite sure where we are," Haruto continued. "We can't see a thing with it so dark." It was true enough, at least in his case—he still wasn't able to see much more than blackish-purple spots where the glow of the flashlight had seared across his retinas."

"Don't worry," the guard said in a friendly tone. "This happens to new Cast Members all the time. Wait right here, and I'll find a spare flashlight for you so you can find your way back to Personnel and get copies of the assignment roster." He turned and walked purposefully away. The other guards and janitors changed their courses away from Parkwide, leaving the Holy Student Council alone again.

"He thought we were _employees_?" Kazumi snorted. "Since when does Disneyland hire exorcists? Apart from Madam Miyako, I mean."

"Since they're wearing a different uniform," said the helpful voice again. There was a rustling in the nearest hedge, and the grinning face of Noriko peered out.

The kids glanced down at themselves and at each other.

"Do you like it?" Noriko asked. "It's my first time using my illusion powers for something that's not scary."

"Not scary? Speak for yourself," Mutsuki grimaced. "I mean, it was a smart tactic, and it did save us from the wrath of park security, but did you have to dress us as _janitors_? I feel so—so _menial_!"

Haruto found himself agreeing. The illusory uniforms were flawless replicas of Disneyland custodial staff costumes, even to the impeccable Disney standards of cleanliness and starch, but they were still _janitorial uniforms_. It rankled the pride.

"Sorry," said Noriko, "but the only other Cast Members who are on the clock at this time of the morning are security guards, and you guys are too young to be security guards."

"We're older than you!" said Kazumi, the youngest of the three.

"Enough," said Haruto. "That guy will be back soon. Let's not waste Noriko's help by dawdling. Thanks for the disguises, Noriko. And the advice," he added, remembering the voice that had helped him make an excuse for their presence.

"Any time," Noriko smiled. "Any time you're here, that is. Now be careful—my influence extends only as far as Parkwide now. As soon as you pass beyond those hedges, you'll be intruders again."

The three young exorcists hustled up the World Bazaar as quickly as they could while still being stealthy and circumspect. Luck was with them, and they weren't seen. Finally, they hopped a turnstile at the front gates and, like magic, were no longer trespassers but merely impatient tourists.

"I guess that means the trip's over," Kazumi pouted.

"It's about time, too," Haruto said, stifling a yawn. "Do you realize we've been here almost twenty hours?" He pulled his Passport out of his pocket and regarded it with a fond smile. Already, the tribulations of the day were fading from his memory, leaving only the fun and success to occupy his thoughts. The same thing had happened after every trip in his childhood…long lines? What long lines? What spilled ice cream? What rude, pushy American tourists? Not at Disneyland! And once he got home and caught up on his sleep, the process would be complete, and it would never even occur to him to try remembering the negatives.

"Kaichou, what's with your ticket?" said Mutsuki.

"Huh?" Haruto said sleepily. Then he frowned. Something _was_ happening to his Passport—it was changing. The color was shifting through different hues in rapid succession, the character design melting and swirling.

Mutsuki and Kazumi hurriedly took out their own tickets. The same thing was happening.

Elegant script, looking strangely like kanji written with a fountain pen, traced its way across the thin cardboard before fading. **A token of my appreciation**, the message read.

Then the designs of the Passports solidified. What had, twenty hours past, been Tokyo Disneyland Resort One-Day Passports, were now Tokyo Disneyland Resort Two-Day Passports.

Kazumi's eyes widened. His grin did the same.

"WOO-HOO!" he whooped to the sky, striking a triumphant pose. "We get another day! Sempai, Kaichou, isn't this great? WE GET ANOTHER DAY!"

"Oh, I get it," said Mutsuki. "It's from Madam Miyako. Her handwriting is half Japanese and half European just like the rest of her. Well, that was nice of her. Don't you agree, Kaichou? Kaichou? Hey, what's the matter?"

Haruto was stunned. "But…what about getting some sleep?" he mumbled.

"Aw, who needs sleep when you've got _Disneyland_?" Kazumi crowed. "Let's hurry up and get back in line! We'll be the first visitors of the day! And now we can go on all the rides without having to worry about any old mission!" His grin became, if anything, even more manic. "And I'll get to see Princess Hanako again!"

"You know, Kazumi-kun," said Mutsuki. "We don't _have_ to use them today. They're good any day within the next year." But her younger counterpart was too excited to pay her any heed. "Oh, well," Mutsuki shrugged, beaming. "We're here now! Well, Kaichou? What do you want to do first?"

Exhaustion hit Haruto like a ton of cleverly themed bricks. "Oh…my…_GOD!_" he wailed.

Then he collapsed onto the Happiest Pavement on Earth.

THE END

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